Public works employees represent a group of workers that is always at high risk for injuries because their work environment is always outdoors and in unstructured environments. Like their counterparts in the private manufacturing sector, they operate tools that can easily maim and injury the worker. Like utility workers, they often have to work in high, precarious or dark, wet underground places. Their duties too require a full range of physical motion and activities in all weather conditions including heavy lifting and manual digging for extended periods of time under all weather condition.
In fact, the public works sector could be easily called a microcosm of many of the industries listed in the left column of this page. During the course of a day, public works employees must lift heavy and awkward objects almost constantly: shovels loaded with dirt, cumbersome and hard to handle tree branches, garbage cans filled to the top with refuse, heavy jackhammers. Each day, they assume postures that stretch their bodies away from a neutral position : twisting at the waist, overhead lifting or reaching, back extension, prolonged standing, putting weight on one leg, hunching, crouching or kneeling in restricted or unstable spaces, pushing their necks or shoulders forward. Moreover, frequent job changes result in shorter periods for the workers to adapt to their jobs .
Most work-related musculoskeletal injuries are a result from cumulative injuries, and are therefore called "cumulative trauma disorders" (CTDs). Improper lifting can cause small damage to the spine, such as a micro tear in a spinal disk. This small injury by itself may not cause pain, but day after day the damage accumulates and weaken the body. Not being allowed to heal, the injury will worsen and at some point, will cause pain. By the time the pain is felt however, the damage will have been done.
PSR®, Professional Safeguard Resources®, for 25 years has specialized in preventing human capital injury losses (primarily back injuries, neck injuries, shoulder injuries, falling injuries) and all types of effort related CTD's (Cumulative Disability Disorders) and MSD's (Musculoskeletal Disorders) in the labor intensive, HRIE (High Risk Injury Employees) workforces.
PSR®'s injury reduction training program is specifically designed for the actual physical, physiological, and psychological demands of the work arena, as well as the true performance needs for each unique work environment, including the public works sectors. . PSR® technologies are a synthesis of western orthopedic practices and Eastern (Asian) biomechanic and therapeutic sciences. PSR® uniquely establishes a reflexive self strengthening work experience in the most awkward of circumstances. The system matures with minimum follow-up to become part of the workforce culture.
The PSR® slogan is "If the work experience does not make you stronger, and you do not feel it making you stronger, it is breaking you down"©. This is particularly true for a utility company employee where the work arena has significant limitations to its' ergonomic redesign and the 'correct' position of the body is often based primarily on safety factors such as maintaining themselves safely on the pole or elsewhere while focused on the task at hand. The body knowledge of how a a leveraged unit body feels requires additional skills.