Prior to professionalism, workplace injuries and professional sports injuries were managed a very similar way – injury occurs, commence rehab, return to sport/work. However, the era of professionalism sent injury management in sport down a completely new path. The reason for this was that highly paid sportsmen and women were now human capital, and every minute not spent on the playing field, was dollars down the drain.
Teams and sporting bodies as a whole began investing in understanding what injuries were most prevalent and how they were occurring. This led to the development of proactive training and prevention programs to reduce the risks. Teams invested in technologies to gather data to help them rigorously measure and monitor factors such as training load, sleep, muscle strength and power, fatigue – you name it, they capture it. They are getting so good at it that a number of injuries can now be predicted. The treatment happens before the injury, meaning the player stays on the sporting field.
“The Sports Model” was a phrase coined by Richard “Brush” Dunn. Brush was a sports physiotherapist who worked with the QLD Reds and Wallabies through the dawn of the professional era. He was part of the shift to proactive injury management and prevention and saw the potential for industry to make the same leap.
I had the pleasure of watching a QLD Reds game with Brush a few years ago. He spoke of helping business start treating their people like sportsmen, and rigorously proactively managing symptoms, before more serious injury occurred. When a significant injury did occur, he ensured the workers were seeing the best doctors and the best surgeons, and rehab was delivered to get that worker match ready – not just good enough to have their workers’ compensation claim closed.
How injuries occur in the workplace is changing. Investment in workplace health and safety driven largely by legislation and compensation schemes, means workplace injuries are more often of insidious onset - rather than a safety incident. The factors leading to these injuries CAN be measured and addressed prior to injury. Creating a culture of early reporting of symptoms, having experienced workplace physiotherapists providing early intervention and running proactive prehab (pre-injury rehabilitation) and prevention programs can drastically reduce injury frequency rates and save thousands in injury costs.
Your workers are human capital. It is time to start managing your workplace health in the professional era. LEARN MORE
