PARTICIPATIVE QUALITY TECHNIQUES FOR BACK PAIN MANAGEMENT

摘要

Support from people at all levels within an organisation is essential for achieving the changes necessary to reduce back injuries, with active commitment from senior managers especially important. Quality management methods have high credibility among such personnel in the manufacturing industry, providing the rationale for this study. This involved the development and initial trialing of a back injury management package, based on a set of tools known as Plan Do Check Act (PDCA). Preliminary evaluation showed that trained operators were able to make effective use of a tailored version of PDCA. Follow up of SMEs briefed on the package found that several were planning to incorporate material from it into their manual handling training programmes. None, however, was planning to use the back pain management package in full.