Chartered Healthy Schools Physiotherapist, Lorna Taylor, has recently published results of research she has been doing with Voice, the union for education professionals. Here are just some of the depressing statistics:
- 88% experienced back pain
- 73% experienced neck and shoulder pain
- 82% experienced Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) once a week or more
- 38% had been off work
We work with many back pain sufferers but most of them are in offices or industry. It seems that very many teachers just “don’t like to complain” and that, perhaps as a result, too many schools pay too little attention to manual handling training and risk assessments. You can find the full Voice report here.
Lorna has been active in this arena for some time and has developed the Jolly Back Chair to address some of the obvious problems. Although we have not done that much with schools in the past, we decided to sell the chair following several conversations with Lorna and our own trials. It’s not the prettiest product in our portfolio but it definitely works! The price point means that it costs less than a supply teacher for one day so it only needs to save one day’s sickness to more than pay for itself. We have already sent out several on 30 days’ sale or return and we haven’t had any back yet!
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