Ergonomics and Musculoskeletal Disorders

So we are the preventive experts in dentistry. We understand the value of prevention. We talk about it all day with our patients. As far as doing your small fillings, flossing the teeth, getting into a night guard, coming in for recare appointments. We understand that they need to take these small actions now to prevent larger, sometimes catastrophic consequences later on. We need to take that same mindset and point it back towards us. We have to start taking the smaller actions now to prevent larger consequences. Later on, and those consequences for us are things like pain, reduce, quality of life, surgery injury, disability, early retirement. These consequences are very common in dentistry and it's my belief that most of the time they're preventable. So let's take that same preventive mindset that we direct towards our patient and turn it back towards ourselves.

Another thing that mirrors what we tell our patients is don't wait until the pain starts. We understand in dentistry that pain isn't necessarily the best indicator of things going wrong. A lot of times things don't hurt until it's too late, right? We almost wish that they hurt earlier, so our patients would be more motivated to do treatment. The same happens with us and our bodies. So we're gonna be talking about musculoskeletal disorders here in a little bit. Those oftentimes start silently. They're kind of like perio in that way. They start at the cellular level, which we can't really feel things happening in the cells and this damage has to accumulate to a certain point for us to start becoming symptomatic. So I tell my students, I tell my clients it's never too early, never too late to start learning these ergonomic principles, whether you're in pain or not. And don't let the lack of pain trick you. I felt like that tricked me and the 1st 10 years of my career I didn't have any pain. I thought I was immune to all of these issues that people were talking about, and I wasn't. The damage just hadn't accumulated yet to a point where I was symptomatic. And once I became symptomatic, it hit me like a ton of bricks. So whether or not you're in pain, definitely be mindful of these ergonomic principles. And again, it's never too early to start implementing these changes.