Workers' Compensation Issues And Articles

Workers' Compensation Articles

Permanent Disability at Private, Self-Insured Firms

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1268/index.html

A Study of Earnings Loss, Replacement, and Return to Work for Workers' Compensation Claimants

Insult to Injury: Workers Compensation

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat Online - Special Report)

The Press Democrat's four part series investigates the workers compensation maze of confusion, delays and litigation in California.

1. Benefits in Doubt - Workers comp was set up to help people hurt on the job, but 200,000 Californians a year will spend years trying to secure their benefits.
2. Debilitating Delays - One out of every five workers injured on the job last year are mired in a workers compensation maze of confusion, delays and litigation.
3. Legal Limits - The litigation rate in California workers compensation has doubled in 12 years. Find out why this is becoming such a troubling and costly trend.
4. Restoring Benefits - Creating a system of gathering information on workers comp could be the first step toward solving its problems.

On March 12, 1998 the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation unanimously approved Educational Fact Sheets for Injured Workers that were created by UC Berkeley, Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP) under contract of the Commission.

Repetitive Strain Injury Information

RSIs are not so much diseases as they are a response to excessive and repetitive demands placed on the body. The hundreds of known repetitive stress injuries, or RSIs, all have a similar cause: excessive wear and tear on your body. They start when you do the same task over and over again, from clicking a mouse to craning to see the computer monitor. If your body doesn't get a chance to heal, the damage adds up, and can eventually destroy your ability to do your job.

Repetitive Strain Injury Articles

How to Start an RSI Support Group

Judy Doane

The large information gaps that exist for people with injuries that tend to heal very slowly create the need to seek out others with similar injuries and to find resources. The desire for a regular meeting develops in the community and one or more persons then initiate the process of organizing meetings. The composition of the group that attends will depend largely on the community from which it springs. The following is an outline that incorporates some of the typical elements of that process.

Jay Hersh January 8, 1998 copyright 1996 Jay Hersh

Hardly anyone would place the modern computer keyboard in the rank of medieval torture devices such as the rack or iron maiden, and yet today there are tens of thousands of people in whom the keyboard strikes the same terror as felt by those of that heinous era. These modern individuals are people crippled, or in the processed of being crippled, by the enormous stresses placed upon their bodies by the daily utilization of this device. Many have lost their livelihood. Others confront the daily dilemma of stoically facing down the pain inflicted upon them by the keyboard use that their jobs require, or abandoning those jobs. These jobs are often well paid professional careers, making them difficult to leave. Often individuals who find themselves in this unenviable position toil on in soldierly fashion until the pain and medical toll becomes too much to bear. By that time however it is often too late, serious and long lasting physical damage is often the consequence.

Reprinted from The RSI Network - Issue 37 - Apr'99 Michael Roberts, B.App.Sci. (Physiotherapy) Tasmania, Australia phone/fax: +61 3 6224-9174 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

With the increasing use of personal computers in homes and offices around the world, there is an increasing incidence of computer-related disorders, among them epicondylitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, De Quervain's tenosynovitis, extensor/flexor tenosynovitis, and others, also known as RSIs (repetitive strain injuries), RMIs (repetitive motion injuries), and OOS (occupational overuse syndrome). When the RSI epidemic swept the world in the late 1970s it was believed that the arm symptoms were coming from the wrists and forearms or from the complainants’ heads (i.e., "It's all in their heads.").

There are still many schools of thought on RSI. One that I believe has been under-rated is the role of posture, particularly in the neck, upper back, and shoulders. This area provides a stable platform from which the arms work. In computer work that platform is held fairly still for most working hours. If one’s posture is erect, low muscle forces are required. But if people slump forward, or need to crane their necks over a badly set-up workstation, their muscles have to work hard and generate high forces to keep their heads from falling. Infrequent amounts of these high forces are no problem; it's when people repetitively and habitually crane forward that their muscles become fatigued and strained. This leads to what are known as static-loading injuries—strained muscles from the overwork of holding for extended periods of time.