Workplace Wellness Program
Article by J. Miller, S.Armfield
Workplace Wellness
Working towards happy, healthy production
PhysioWorks offers businesses Workplace Wellness Screening for their employees. Research has shown that ROI on workplace wellness programs is high as $2.73 for every dollar spent (Baicker, et al. 2010).
We can offer you a comprehensive screening of your employees health needs and assist them on their journey towards better health.
PhysioWorks can offer varying levels of workplace screening programs.
What is a Workplace Wellness Screening?
PhysioWorks will discuss your specific needs with you and tailor your Workplace Wellness Screening solution to meet those needs and your budget.
Your Wellness Screening may include:
General Health Questionnaire
Asking your workers what their current health problems are is crucial to understand their specific needs. PhysioWorks comprehensively screens all workers by having a skilled physiotherapist ask all the right questions. Asking the right questions lets employers know what health risks employers are dealing with. Complete employee confidentiality is maintained.
Functional Capacity Evaluation
A Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE) is a series of tests, practices, and observations specific to your worker’s needs and the environment that they work in. Depending on your workplace needs, PhysioWorks can tailor your FCE to assess a variety of physical parameters including.
- General biometrics
- Blood pressure
- Joint range of motion
- Cardiovascular fitness
- Balance and mobility
- Neurological screening
- Neurodynamics
- Muscle strength
- Manual Handling
Individual Worker Reports
Upon request, PhysioWorks can provide every worker with a personalised report of their testing findings. The report will outline individual health risk factors, comparing other workers in similar sectors and normalised population data. The report can also recommend specific treatment options and provide workers with invaluable information about pre-existing health conditions.
Data Analysis
Imperative to asking the right questions is being able to interpret the data accurately. PhysioWorks can provide your business with an easy-to-read data analysis report that maintains patient confidentiality.
Which Workplace Screening Tool is Best for Your Business?
While PhysioWorks offers a standard range of Worker Wellness Solutions, we also offer very flexible solutions and costings to ensure that your business is discovering and paying for exactly what you need. The best solution is a phone call away. Please discuss your Workplace Wellness needs with us at PhysioWorks.
Related Information
Arm Pain Causes
Arm pain and injuries are widespread. Arm pain can occur as a result of either sudden, traumatic or repetitive overuse. The causes can be related to sports injuries, work injuries or simply everyday arm use.
Arm pain can be a local injury, musculoskeletal injury or could even be referred from nerves in your neck (cervical radiculopathy). This can result in neck-arm pain.
Causes of Arm Pain by Region
Causes of Arm Pain by Structure
- Arthritis
- Bursitis
- Ligament Injury
- Muscle Pain
- Tendinopathy (Tendinitis-Tendinopathy-Tendinosis)
Neck-Related Arm Pain
Shoulder-Related Arm Pain
- AC Joint Injury
- Biceps Tendinopathy
- Broken Shoulder - Fractured Humerus
- Bursitis Shoulder
- Dislocated Shoulder
- Frozen Shoulder
- Rotator Cuff Calcific Tendinopathy
- Rotator Cuff Syndrome
- Rotator Cuff Tear
- Shoulder Arthritis
- Shoulder Impingement
- Shoulder Tendonitis
- Swimmer's Shoulder
Elbow-Related Arm Pain
Wrist-Related Arm Pain
Hand-Related Arm Pain
Muscle-Related Arm Pain
- Cramps
- DOMS - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
- Muscle Strain (Muscle Pain)
- RSI - Repetitive Strain Injury
- Overuse Injuries
Other Sources of Arm Pain
Common Causes of Arm Pain
The most common sources of arm pain include shoulder pain, wrist pain and elbow pain.
- Your rotator cuff or frozen shoulder most commonly causes shoulder pain.
- Elbow pain is most commonly caused by tennis elbow or golfers elbow.
- Wrist & hand pain can be related to carpal tunnel, wrist arthritis or even a thumb tendon condition known as de Quervain's tenosynovitis.
Referred Arm Pain
As mentioned earlier, arm pain can be referred to from another source. Cervical radiculopathy is a common source of referred arm pain. Cervical radiculopathy will not respond to treatment where you feel the arm pain. However, it will respond positively to treatment at the source of the injury (e.g. your neck joints).
Professional assessment from a health practitioner skilled in diagnosing both spinal-origin and local-origin (muscle and joint) injuries (e.g. your physiotherapist) is recommended to ensure an accurate diagnosis and prompt treatment directed at the arm pain source.
Arm Pain has Diverse Causes.
The causes of your arm pain can be extensive and varied. Due to this diversity, your arm pain should be assessed by a suitably qualified health practitioner to attain an accurate diagnosis, treatment plan and implementation specific to your arm pain.
What Arm Pain is Associated with a Heart Attack?
Left-arm pain can be an early sign of a life-threatening cardiac issue. Based on this, a professional medical assessment that involves an accurate history, symptom analysis, physical examination and diagnostic tests to exclude a potential heart attack is important to exclude this potentially life-threatening source of arm pain.
For more information, please consult with your health practitioner, call an ambulance on 000, or visit a hospital emergency department to put your mind at ease.
Good News. Most Arm Pain is NOT Life-Threatening.
Luckily, life-threatening arm pain is far less likely than a local musculoskeletal injury. Arm pain caused by a localised arm muscle, tendon or joint injury should be assessed and confirmed by your health practitioner before commencing treatment.
Arm Pain Prognosis
The good news is that arm pain, and injury will normally respond very favourably to medical or physiotherapy intervention when early professional assessment and treatment is sought. Please do not delay in consulting your healthcare practitioner if you experience arm pain.
Common Arm Pain Treatments
With accurate assessment and early treatment, most arm injuries respond extremely quickly to physiotherapy or medical care, allowing you to resume pain-free and normal activities of daily living quickly.
Please ask your physiotherapist for their professional treatment advice.
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Back, Elbow, Exercise Equipment, Foot, Hand & Wrist, Knee, Resistance Band, Shoulder
Resistance Bands Pre-Packed 1.5m
$6.90 – $38.70 -
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Back, Exercise Balls, Exercise Equipment, Knee, Shoulder
Exercise Ball – 300kg Antiburst
$30.00 – $48.00 -
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What is Physiotherapy Treatment?
Physiotherapists help people affected by illness, injury or disability through exercise, manual joint therapy, soft tissue techniques, education and advice. Physiotherapists maintain physical health, allow patients to manage pain and prevent disease for people of all ages. Physiotherapists help encourage pain relief, injury recovery, enabling people to stay playing a sport, working or performing daily living activities while assisting them to remain functionally independent.
There is a multitude of different physiotherapy treatment approaches.
Acute & Sub-Acute Injury Management
Hands-On Physiotherapy Techniques
Your physiotherapist's training includes hands-on physiotherapy techniques such as:
- Joint Mobilisation (gentle joint gliding techniques)
- Joint Manipulation
- Physiotherapy Instrument Mobilisation (PIM)
- Minimal Energy Techniques (METs)
- Massage
- Soft Tissue Techniques
Your physiotherapist has skilled training. Physiotherapy techniques have expanded over the past few decades. They have researched, upskilled and educated themselves in a spectrum of allied health skills. These skills include techniques shared with other healthcare practitioners. Professions include exercise physiologists, remedial massage therapists, osteopaths, acupuncturists, kinesiologists, chiropractors and occupational therapists, to name a few.
Physiotherapy Taping
Your physiotherapist is a highly skilled professional who utilises strapping and taping techniques to prevent and assist injuries or pain relief and function.
Alternatively, your physiotherapist may recommend a supportive brace.
Acupuncture and Dry Needling
Many physiotherapists have acquired additional training in acupuncture and dry needling to assist pain relief and muscle function.
Physiotherapy Exercises
Physiotherapists have been trained in the use of exercise therapy to strengthen your muscles and improve your function. Physiotherapy exercises use evidence-based protocols where possible as an effective way that you can solve or prevent pain and injury. Your physiotherapist is highly skilled in prescribing the "best exercises" for you and the most appropriate "exercise dose" for you, depending on your rehabilitation status. Your physiotherapist will incorporate essential pilates, yoga and exercise physiology components to provide you with the best result. They may even use Real-Time Ultrasound Physiotherapy so that you can watch your muscles contract on a screen as you correctly retrain them.
- Muscle Stretching
- Core Exercises
- Strengthening Exercises
- Neurodynamics
- Balance Exercises
- Proprioception Exercises
- Real-Time Ultrasound Physiotherapy
- Swiss Ball Exercises
Biomechanical Analysis
Biomechanical assessment, observation and diagnostic skills are paramount to the best treatment. Your physiotherapist is a highly skilled health professional. They possess superb diagnostic skills to detect and ultimately avoid musculoskeletal and sports injuries. Poor technique or posture is one of the most common sources of a repeat injury.
Hydrotherapy
Aquatic water exercises are an effective method to provide low bodyweight exercises.
Sports Physiotherapy
Sports physio requires an extra level of knowledge and physiotherapy to assist injury recovery, prevent injury and improve performance. For the best advice, consult a Sports & Exercise Physiotherapist.
Vestibular Physiotherapy
Women's Health
Women's Health Physiotherapy is a particular interest group of therapies.
Workplace Physiotherapy
Not only can your physiotherapist assist you in sport, but they can also help you at work. Ergonomics looks at the best postures and workstations set up for your body at work or home. Whether it be lifting technique improvement, education programs or workstation setups, your physiotherapist can help you.
Electrotherapy
Plus Much More
Your physiotherapist is a highly skilled body mechanic. A physiotherapist has particular interests in certain injuries or specific conditions. For advice regarding your problem, please get in touch with your PhysioWorks team.
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Back, Exercise Balls, Exercise Equipment, Knee, Shoulder
Exercise Ball – 300kg Antiburst
$30.00 – $48.00 -
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-
-
-
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Back, Elbow, Exercise Equipment, Foot, Hand & Wrist, Knee, Resistance Band, Shoulder
Resistance Bands Pre-Packed 1.5m
$6.90 – $38.70 -
Kinesiology Tape
Kinesiology tape has a comprehensive array of therapeutic benefits. Because kinesiology taping can usually be left on for several days or up to a week, these therapeutic benefits are available to the injured area 24 hours a day, significantly accelerating the healing process from trauma, injuries and inflammatory conditions.
Benefits of Kinesiology Taping
Pain Relief via Structural Support for Weak or Injured Body Parts
Kinesiology tape is a flexible elastic tape that moves with your body. The supple elasticity provides supports to your body parts without the tape slipping.
By supporting your body part, kinesiology tape can provide you with pain relief and muscular support to help control body parts affected by muscle inhibition.
Muscle Support
Kinesiology tape potentially assists your muscle strength via physical assistance. It also provides tactile feedback through the skin, e.g. proprioception boost. This phenomenon may help both the non-disabled athlete to enhance their performance and hypotonic, e.g. children with low muscle tone.
Swelling Reduction
Kinesiology provides a passive lift to your skin via its elastic properties. This vacuum effect allows your lymphatic and venous drainage systems to drain and swollen or bruised tissue quicker than without the kinesiology tape.
It is also thought that this same principle can assist the removal of exercise byproducts like lactic acid that may contribute to post-exercise soreness, e.g. delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
More info: Strapping & Supportive Taping
Is Good Posture Healthy?
Good Posture Benefits:
- It keeps your bones and joints in the correct alignment.
- It helps to decrease the abnormal wearing of joint surfaces.
- It decreases the stress on the ligaments holding the joints of the spine together.
- It prevents the spine from becoming fixed in abnormal positions.
- It prevents muscle fatigue.
- It prevents any backache and muscular pain.
- It contributes to a competent and confident appearance.
To Achieve Good Posture You Will Require the Following:
- Good muscle flexibility
- Normal motion in the joints
- Strong postural muscles
- A balance of muscle forces on both sides of the spine
- Awareness of your posture, plus knowledge of proper postural position, leads to conscious correction.
Practise the correct posture for standing, sitting, and lying down (as described below) to gradually replace your old position.
More Info
Article by John Miller
What is Good Posture?
That's why proud and confident people stand tall with excellent posture. It's a habit! Standing with good posture looks and feels fantastic, plus it's very healthy for your joints, muscles, bones, blood circulation and most importantly, your self-esteem.
How you hold your body in space is your posture. Your posture is a direct result of the postural habits that you commonly exhibit. You can choose to hold good posture or poor posture. Gravity is your worst enemy while standing or sitting. You could also refer to this as your spinal posture, back or neck posture.
The good news for you is that you can quite easily change your postural habits and train your body to sit, stand, walk, and even rest in great postures. Good posture also places the least strain upon your supporting muscles and ligaments.
But, no one posture is good to maintain all day. As a human, you were designed to move from posture to posture to avoid muscle fatigue and abnormal sustained tissue loading. This means that your best posture is your next posture!
Benefits of Good Posture
Good posture:
- Prevents postural muscle fatigue.
- Correctly aligns your joints and bones while encouraging efficient muscle activity.
- Help minimalise joint stress.
- Avoids passive ligament overload.
- Prevents backache, neckache and muscular pain.
- It contributes to your enhanced confidence and a good appearance!
Standing comfortably with good posture should feel natural and energy-efficient. Bad postural habits can cause a few muscular aches and pains for a few days during the early transition (posture habit change) phase. You may experience temporary joint or muscle discomfort or fatigue as your joints realign, ligaments stretch, and postural muscles start working. The good news is that your body will quickly adapt and feel more comfortable and strong in your new normal posture if you keep maintaining a good posture.
Plus... the upside is that not only will you be less likely to suffer pain, but you'll also look confident and feel fantastic too!
How to Improve Your Standing Posture:
The number one tip to achieve a great standing posture is to "stand tall"! All the muscles that you need to push you taller are the same ones that improve your posture.
- Stand tall!
- Extend your head directly up (think balloon lifting your head with a string in the top of your skull) - but keep your chin tucked in. Avoid tilting your head forward, backward or sideways.
- Your earlobes will line up with the middle of your shoulders.
- Keep your shoulders back, your knees straight, and your back straight.
- Let arms hang naturally down the sides of the body
- Lightly draw in your core stomach muscles. Avoid tilting your pelvis forward.
- Avoid locking the knees.
- Ensure your feet arches are in a neutral (not flat) position.
- Stand with weight over the centre of your feet.
- Stand with your feet slightly apart (shoulder-width).
- When standing for sustained periods, shift your weight from one foot to the other, or stand in a walk stand and rock your weight from your front to back foot.
How to Quickly Check Your Standing Posture
Stand against a wall with shoulders and bottom touching wall. The rear of your head should lightly touch the wall.
How to Correct Your Posture?
If you experience discomfort in the above test and can't easily correct your posture, you may have some joint, ligament or muscular movement restriction. All of these problems can be quickly assessed and quickly improved by your physiotherapist. Please consult them for advice.
Having difficulty maintaining a normal upright posture? You are probably suffering from reduced muscle endurance or strength. But these can both be easily improved with some practice of the right exercises. Your physiotherapist is an expert in prescribing the best postural exercises for you in a stage-appropriate manner to help you improve your posture without causing unnecessary pain or injury.
Your physiotherapist may also advise a posture brace or prescribe some posture taping to quickly assist you in achieving and maintaining a good posture.
Contact your physiotherapist for posture advice specific to you and your needs.
Article by John Miller
What is the Best Standing Posture?
Standing with your best posture not only looks and feels fantastic, but it's also very healthy for you.
Great posture is the best thing for your muscles, joints, bones, blood circulation and most importantly, your self-esteem. That's why proud and confident people stand tall with excellent posture. It's a successful habit!
Good posture also places the least strain upon your supporting muscles and ligaments.
How you hold your body in space is your posture. Your everyday posture is a direct result of your everyday postural habits. You can choose to hold good posture or poor posture. The constant compressive weight of gravity is your worst enemy while standing or sitting. You could also refer to this as your spinal posture, back or neck posture.
It's actually quite easy to improve your postural habits. But it is a habit, and researchers suggest that it takes 10000 attempts to create a habit. That's a good or a bad habit! Why not start the new you with a proud and posture perfect body today?
What is Your Best Posture?
Humans were always designed to move and be versatile. You were designed to move from posture to posture to avoid muscle fatigue and abnormal sustained tissue loading. When we were hunters and gatherers, it was easy. But, with specialised jobs and postures, we tend to become static for too long these days, which causes postural fatigue, which leads to posture failure. This means that your best posture is your next posture!Â
Benefits of Good Posture
Good posture:
- Prevents postural muscle fatigue.
- Correctly aligns your joints and bones while encouraging efficient muscle activity.
- Help minimalise joint stress.
- Avoids passive ligament overload.
- Prevents backache, neckache and muscular pain.
- Contributes to your enhanced self-esteem!
Your ideal standing posture should be comfortable, easily attained and maintained. Your best posture should feel natural and be energy efficient. Bad postural habits can cause a few muscular aches and pains for a few days during the early transition (posture habit change) phase. During this period, you can experience some temporary joint or muscle discomfort. These discomforts are related to mild joint adaptation as your joints realign, ligaments stretch, and postural muscles start working. The good news is that your body will quickly adapt and feel more comfortable and strong in your new normal posture if you keep maintaining a good posture.
Plus... the upside is that not only will you be less likely to suffer pain, but you'll also look confident and feel fantastic too!
How to Improve Your Standing Posture:
If I had to tell you one "switch" tip, it is simply to "stand tall" whenever you think about it. The muscles that you use to stand taller are the same muscles that improve your posture.
- Stand tall!
- Think tall neck (ballerina or model style)- but keep your chin tucked in. Avoid tilting your head forward, backward or sideways.
- Your earlobes will line up with the middle of your shoulders.
- Keep your shoulders back, your knees straight, and your back straight.
- Let arms hang naturally down the sides of the body
- Lightly draw in your core stomach muscles. Avoid tilting your pelvis forward.
- Avoid locking the knees.
- Ensure your feet arches are in a neutral (not flat) position.
- Stand with weight over the centre of your feet.
- Stand with your feet slightly apart (shoulder-width).
- Shift your weight from one foot to the other when standing for a sustained period. Alternatively, stand in a walk-stand and rock your weight from your front to back foot.
How to Quickly Check Your Standing Posture
Stand against a wall with shoulders and bottom touching the wall. The back of your head should lightly touch the wall. If you can't do this without pain or strain, you may have some restrictions on some spinal joints, ligaments or muscle tightness. All of these problems can be quickly assessed and quickly improved by your physiotherapist with some joint mobilisations, stretches, massage and/or strengthening exercises. Please consult your physiotherapist for specific advice regarding your posture.
Posture Fatigue?
Having difficulty maintaining your normal upright posture? You are probably suffering from reduced muscle endurance or strength. You can improve postural muscle fatigue quite easily with repetitive contraction and periodic posture breaks. This will help to strengthen and improve your postural muscle endurance.
Your physiotherapist is a professional in prescribing the best postural exercises for you in a stage-appropriate manner. They may consider temporarily prescribing you a posture brace or prescribe some posture taping to assist you in transitioning, achieving and maintaining the best posture for you.