Tradies National Health Month 2016

It’s August and time for Tradies National Health Month.

The National Health Month was put together to target Australian Tradies with a focus on improving their health, safety and wellbeing.

Due to labour intensive manual handling and repetitive physical work, the top health issues for tradies include:

• back injuries
• neck injuries

According to Safe Work Australia, Australian Tradies are among the highest serious injury and disease compensation claimants.

The main causes of serious injuries in Australia were:

• muscular Stress while lifting or handling objects (33%)
• falls, trips and slips (22%)

… resulting in musculoskeletal injuries and disorders.

This is why the Australian Physiotherapy Association was heavily involved with bringing about Tradies National Health Month. Physiotherapists diagnose, treat, and can prevent disease and disability for Tradies by helping them recover from injuries, reducing pain, reducing stiffness associated with on-the-job movement and injury, increasing mobility for patients, and ultimately helping them to prevent injury or further injury.

While backs are the major proponent of body stress injury claims, other body parts prone to injury claims include:

• upper limbs
• lower legs
• hips
• abdomen
• pelvic region

On top of that, claims include mental disorders, digestive system diseases, nervous system and sense organ diseases, skin and subcut tissue diseases, and infectious, respiratory, circulatory and parasitic diseases. So it’s not just a case of “watching your back”, workers need to look at their entire health (physically and mentally) in their work environment.

Did you know that serious claims are increasing among Tradies who are 55 years of age and above? That’s right, according to the statistics, serious claims awarded to employees aged 55 and above rose from 9% in 2000 to 2001 to 18% in 2011 to 2012. And a study found that retirement from the construction industry due to disability is around 143% more common than in the general population.

Therefore we need to look at the long term impact of how a worker performs their job, what safety risk management systems are in place, and how well they are maintained. Use Tradies National Health Month as a reminder to be aware of and improve health and safety.