Back pain is the nation’s leading cause of disability with 1.1 million sufferers experiencing some form of back pain each year. Department of Health statistics have estimated that back pain is costing British industry an annual £5 billion and the NHS £481 million each year. Recent research has concluded that children are also experiencing various forms of back pain.
Back pain is spread evenly across the community in terms of age, gender and geography but occupation appears to make a difference. Back pain is reported most commonly in those with skilled manual, partly skilled and unskilled jobs. Other jobs that are at risk include:
• People who drive 25,000 miles a year or more averaged 22 days a year off work with back pain, compared with just over 3 days for low mileage drivers.
• Train drivers are twice as likely as HGV drivers to report low back pain.
• 50% of office workers who use a telephone for at least 2 hours a day report neck pain.
• 31% of computer workers experienced low back pain in a year.
• 57% of supermarket cashiers experienced low back pain in a year.
We offer a service into companies to help manage sickness absence due to musculo-skeletal problems. We also offer Counselling and Coaching to employees and can organise both individual and group sessions.
For larger companies we can visit your workplace on a weekly basis to assess and treat employees on site. This ensures that problems are dealt with quickly and minimises employee and absence. We are also able to liaise directly with managers to help them implement changes that improve employee morale and decrease workplace injuries and RSI. We have specialist knowledge of DSE assessments and can help find solutions to problems found by your in house DSE assessment team.
Smaller employers can still benefit by sending their staff directly to us for speedy assessment and treatment at our clinic. We are then able to liaise with their managers to make recommendations to enable to staff member to remain in work or to return as soon as possible.
Please contact us at the clinic by phone or by email to lynne@physiotherapies.co.uk to discuss your particular needs.