There are several things that make the process of going onsite to help tell the stories of how people do their jobs fun. I love to get to talk to people and have them teach me about what they do and I love to find out what brought them to that job. I enjoy looking and digging into the physical and postural demands of the position, measuring them, and being able to convey them back in a way that is useful to physicians, nurses, and physical therapists to rehab an injured employee and help them return to work.
A crane is driving 50 ton pilings for a tunnel at the interchange of Rt. 295/I-42/I-76 in Camden County, NJ.
But, one of my hobbies is photography. I love that I can use my hobby at work to help tell the story. Sometimes, words can not convey the environment that a task is performed in or the posture a worker has to adopt to complete the task. They old saw “a picture says a 1,000 words” is definitely true when it comes to photography incorporated into a job description. It can help a clinician better imagine the task as performed in the environment. For a physical therapist, it may help them pick a better exercise to mimic the task or for a physician, it may help them to better understand the needed strength or range of motion for the task.
That being said, worksite photograph can sometimes make matters worse if the photo does not tell an accurate story of the action or environment being depicted. The perspective that a photo is taken from can distort the viewer’s perception of where a task is performed at or can make the height at which a task is performed looked less than or greater than it actually is. If the photograph distorts the task or the environment, it can do an injustice to the worker or the clinicians as the return to work process is engaged.
The Reality
The photograph at the top of this blog was taken when we were leaving the worksite where laborers were building a new interchange where three highways merge together. The dockworkers who were operating the crane were installing 50 ton pilings that would eventually support the roof of a tunnel. When I took this image, we were in our vehicle and on the actual highway that was still in operation but below the job site. It looks as if the crane is precipitously close to an inclined surface where backing up a little bit could be disastrous.
In reality, there was a significant area of operational surface around the crane. That surface was also pretty muddy as we had several hours of solid rain prior to our visit. That mud is important because it helps remind the treating clinicians that the employees have to be able to “walk in areas of wet and/or uneven terrain” which helps to put the context in place for why the ability to walk and the ability to balance is important within the position. The photograph below looks at the crane from an entirely different perspective and shows how much additional space is around the crane. (For the photographers that may read this, the photograph was shot an effective focal length of 24mm. Even with this wide angle, I had to back up a significant distance to be able to capture the entirety of the crane within the frame.)
One detail to add that the photograph does not – each of my boots weighed about 2 pounds heavier from the nice thick mud that did not want to let go of them. Another reason to keep the legs strong.
At last count, I have written job descriptions for over 80 different job types – and that does not account for differentiation between those job types for different employers. I love getting to go out and write job descriptions because it is an opportunity for me to do two important things. It lets me go out, sometimes get dirty, and learn what people do at their jobs. Secondly, it gives me the opportunity to help share their story of what they do, why they do it, and most importantly how they do it.
I’ve decided to put together a list of some of the occupations that I would like to have the opportunity to write job descriptions for in 2021. I know that I will probably see many other job titles not on this list as well as revisit some titles that I have done in the past for new clients. However, each of these titles holds a little bit of extra interest for me either due to the uniqueness of the job title or the discrepancies that I know exist between what is done in the title and what is contained in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles entry for the job title.
Zookeeper – During the early phases of the pandemic when so many places were shut down, we ended up watching some of the zoo based shows on television. We have always loved visiting different zoos to learn about different types of animals. Shortly before the world shut down, I had the opportunity to work with a mental health facility to establish physical and postural demands for the employees that ran the day to day operations of an onsite barn that housed horses, goats, and a couple of other animals. It was interesting to learn about the tasks that are involved in the care of those animals and I would love to see how those demands change as the size of the animals change. Turtle Back Zoo, Cape May Zoo, Philly Zoo, I’m available to come help with your job descriptions.
K9 officer – Over the years, I have had the opportunity to measure job demands for regular patrol officers for municipal departments. While I’ve met K9 officers at events, I have never had the opportunity to discuss actual job demands for their position. With a good portion of my 10,000 step goal each day going to walking our new puppy, I have a new interest in how these officers interact with their canine partners as well as how their day to day job demands differ from the rest of the officers in the police department.
Mosquito Commission – As the county I live in is bordered on two sides by water and marshes as well as having a significant numbers of lakes, streams, and rivers, it can get pretty buggy (I live near one of those water/marsh borders so I experience the pain of the mosquitoes every year). The Mosquito Commission works to reduce the mosquito populations through spraying from the air as well as using some unique vehicles to disrupt mosquito hatching areas in the marshes. It would be interesting to get to see their work up close as well as the vehicles that they use to perform their job. These vehicles and the environments that these employees work in generate some interesting needs in terms of postural demands.
School Nurse – Nursing is an occupation that is unfairly lumped into a catch all entry in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. There are so many different environments where nursing is performed. So often, we think about hospitals and doctors offices and forget about the nurses that are tasked with taking care of our children during the school day. School nurses have had an incredible additional burden placed on them to help take care of students and staff this year in terms of COVID-19. I would love to have the opportunity to share their story of the things that they take care of that the general public (and their school district administration) may not be aware that they do.
Paraprofessional (schools) – When we were performing Functional Capacity Evaluations, we used to be sent paraprofessionals from local school districts that had been injured in providing assistance and care to assigned students. In the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, they are placed at the light (20 pounds occasional) work level under the teacher’s assistant entry. However, many of the paraprofessionals that I have met over the years are working in classrooms where they are performing hands on assistance for children that may not be able to perform certain tasks for themselves – almost in a similar physical demands role to a home health aide or CNA. They are getting injured performing tasks that are well above that 20 pound occasional demand level.
Land surveyor – Over the last year with people moving out of the city as they realize they can work remotely, land surveyors have been super busy with property surveys to help close sales of houses. But land surveyors do much more and work in many different environments, from helping to verify flood maps to measuring commercial properties to make sure that footings are where they are supposed to be.
Organ/piano repairer – Last Thanksgiving weekend, I had a short opportunity to watch an organ repairer begin taking apart a large pipe organ in a church for a long overdue repair. I was amazed to see the collection of pipes and bellows that hide in a room behind a faux wall that make up the bulk of a pipe organ. This is an occupation that requires many different physical abilities to perform.
Wildlife Conservation officer – My family spends a lot of time outdoors, both here in NJ and when we vacation in Maine, which has resulted in North Woods Law and Lone Star Law becoming favorite television shows for our family. We also live in an area where we can occasionally find the NJ DEP Conservation Police performing patrols. They don’t have many officers and their job requires them to perform physically in a variety of different environments. It would be interesting to get a better understanding of the physical and postural demands for this position.
Blacksmith – This is a job title that I would love to be able to do a comparison of the physical demands for current blacksmiths and how blacksmiths used to perform their profession. I always love watching the blacksmiths do their work at Allaire Village in NJ and at Washington Crossing State Park in Pennsylvania. When they are working, they need to keep track of both the fire used to heat the metal for shaping it as well as use a variety of tools to shape the metal into their intended final product. With the blacksmiths who demonstrate the older, colonial era methods at the parks it would be interesting to do that comparison of how technology has changed the physical demands for metalworking.
The Friday Five is a set of five links that I have come across this week that pertain to ergonomics, occupational health, safety, human performance, or human factors. For whatever reason, I found them interesting, but they are provided with minimal or no commentary and are not meant to be endorsement for a given product or research paper.
These links were generated during a PubMed search on the terms: applied ergonomics
The Friday Five is a set of five links that I have come across this week that pertain to ergonomics, occupational health, safety, human performance, or human factors. For whatever reason, I found them interesting, but they are provided with minimal or no commentary and are not meant to be endorsement for a given product or research paper.
This week’s five are courtesy of a PubMed search on the terms: applied ergonomics
Manghisi et al. look at the use of the Kinect V2 (the newer generation of the Kinect) for performing RULA assessments to evaluate awkward postures. Devices like the Kinect are interesting to me as they may allow for more natural evaluations of human movement in real life work settings.
JA Dobson et al. provide a literature review of work boot design and the impact on how workers walk. (This is an important topic area that came up yesterday when we were in the field performing assessments for a customized job description. The particular job has a variety of varied tasks with some that require steel toed boots. The biggest complaint of the employees is comfort of steel toed boots for the tasks performed.)
Kang and Shin performed a study to determine the impact on accuracy and muscle activation patterns when target location is varied on computer touch screens. This is going to be an important area for human factors and user interface professionals as touch screens become more common in the workplace.
Plamondon et al. look at the differences in how male and female workers lifting palletized loads with the same relative weight. This study uses a similar lifting load weight to remove strength from the equation when looking at how the task is performed biomechanically. While patterns between male and female subjects were similar, interjoint coordination differs. Understanding of these differences can help with interventions to better reduce material handling injuries.
NJ Ergonomics Blog 