Perhaps you’ve heard that early intervention has proven to be successful for many other companies. Naturally, you have some questions about how it might work for you.

Sound familiar? Here are the most frequently asked questions we get from prospective clients, answered.

Let’s start at the beginning …

What is early intervention?

The early warning signs of future injuries are present in your workforce today. Early intervention is a proactive strategy designed to discover early warning signs of MSDs and prevent the early warning signs from developing into an injury.

This process has five parts:

1. Awareness and Education
2. Encourage Early Reporting
3. React Positively and Respond Quickly
4. Conduct the Early Intervention Consultation
5. Follow Up and Report

(For more, read A Safety Manager’s Guide to Early Intervention.)

What happens during an early intervention consultation?

The goal of the early intervention consultation is to identify the contributing risk factors to the worker’s fatigue and discomfort and remove them.

This consultation has three parts:

1. Listen to the employee and understand the problems they are having.
2. Review the self-care program for the employee and make them aware of the prevention tools available to them.
3. Evaluate the job and remove any causative risk factors present through the ergonomics improvement process and implementing ergonomic controls.

Once the injury prevention specialist has identified risk factors, they remove them by implementing controls. Ergonomic controls reduce ergonomic risk factors. Individual controls such as reviewing good work practices, good health habits and injury prevention tools reduce individual risk factors.

(For more, read Early Intervention – The Critical Difference Between an MSD and a Healthy, Productive Worker.)

On average, how often does an early report result in an injury? In other words, what is the success rate of early intervention consultations?

By identifying risk factors and putting controls in place, most early intervention consultations successfully resolve and the worker is returned to peak health.

For example, so far in 2013 96% of early reports have been resolved without a medical injury through early intervention consultations with an Ergonomics Plus injury prevention specialist.

If employees are encouraged to report fatigue and discomfort, won’t they take advantage of that?

Before getting the early intervention process off the ground, some of our clients and prospects are concerned about allowing early reporting of fatigue and discomfort.

They were worried that employees would take advantage of early reporting and over report fatigue and discomfort. They thought this would create an avalanche of reports that would eventually become injuries.

These would have become more significant and severe injuries down the road if not reported early. Right now is always the best time to seek help for combating discomfort that can lead to an injury. Risk factors can be identified and (workplace and individual) controls can be implemented to prevent the need for the employee to seek medical evaluation and treatment.

Will employees really utilize the self-care program?

A recommended self-care program and injury prevention tools should be available to all employees.

These tools include:

• Preventive warm-up exercises
• Proper lifting techniques
• Proper body mechanics
• Identification of ergonomics improvement opportunities
• Preventive counteractive stretching exercises
• Proper resting/sleeping posture
• Strengthening exercises
• Fatigue recovery and sleep
• Proper nutrition and hydration
• Good health habits
• Personal fitness and wellness

Some people are skeptical that employees will be compliant with their self-care program and utilize these tools. After all, things like good health habits, proper hydration and counteractive stretching aren’t mandatory and accountability is difficult.

Here’s the thing. When employees recognize the early warning signs of an MSD, they become very motivated. An abnormal amount of fatigue and discomfort is not an enjoyable experience. They know if their issue progresses into an injury it will be very painful. Employees understand that they need to take responsibility for their part in the prevention process.

After doing thousands of early intervention consultations, I can confidently state that most employees are compliant and do a great job implementing a self-care program. Of course, every once in a while there is an outlier who isn’t compliant.

But is that going to stop you from helping the ones that are?

Who should perform early intervention consultations?

Early intervention consultations should be conducted by an experienced injury prevention specialist. At Ergonomics Plus, we use Certified Athletic Trainers. They’re specifically trained in injury prevention and human performance, and make the perfect partner for your OHS process.

(For more, read Five Reasons Why an Athletic Trainer Deserves a Spot on Your OHS Team.)

Is an early intervention consultation a recordable injury?

In 2011, OSHA published an interpretation relating to exercise that has caused some confusion and concern among safety and human resource managers.

Specifically, the interpretation request asked if “exercise is considered medical treatment” as defined in OSHA’s recordkeeping regulations. OSHA’s response was, “If a physician or licensed health care professional recommends therapeutic exercise in response to a work-related injury or illness, the case is considered to involve medical treatment and the case is recordable.”

Note that although the question posed to OSHA asked if “exercise is considered medical treatment”, OSHA’s response specifies “therapeutic exercise in response to a work-related injury or illness.” OSHA states in its response that it considers “therapeutic exercise” a form of physical therapy, and that physical therapy is considered medical treatment for recordkeeping purposes.

The early intervention strategy employed by the Injury Prevention Specialists at Ergonomics Plus is about prevention, not treatment.

Preventive consultations are available to each and every employee. The self-help techniques recommended are not therapeutic in nature, and serve as a means to help employees counteract daily fatigue.

Employees are encouraged to seek self-help advice to prevent injury and illness. When an employee requests self-help advice for any concern (related to work activities or not) and does not desire or request a medical evaluation, our injury prevention specialists will consult with the employee to review and encourage a variety of prevention tools and techniques. These techniques are advocated and reviewed in our injury prevention training program and in handouts or publications that are available to all employees.

(For more, read Exercise – Is it a Recordable or Not?)

Why should I consider adding early intervention to our OHS process?

These are just a few of the benefits of adding early intervention to your OHS process:

1. Early intervention identifies and removes MSD risk factors.
2. Early intervention prevents injuries.
3. Early intervention is the right thing to do for your people.
4. Early intervention is a cost-effective prevention strategy for your business.
5. Early intervention can help you build the safety culture you’ve always wanted.

(For more, read Five Reasons Why You Need to Get Started With Early Intervention Today.)

Did we miss anything?

Do you have a question about early intervention that we missed?

Get in touch with us today and we’d be happy to help you out.