Kelly is a 17 year old Baker's Assistant. She hated school
so left at 16 when her Uncle said she could come and work
for him at his bakery. The work was heavy and repetitive. Her uncle explained that she had to learn each task before she could move on to the next. She sometimes found she had to do things a bit differently. When she was doing the preparation, most of the guys lifted heavy bags of flour but she had to scoop it into smaller containers.
Recently, she had started learning roll and loaf formation. It was hard and heavy work. She struggled with the levers on the bun rounder and found lifting the full racks into the oven difficult. Every day, she went home with aching shoulders and arms.
Over the weeks, the pain got worse. She found she had the pain all the time and while she was at work, she often had pain shoot through her shoulders like an electric current. Eventually, she went to her uncle. “My right shoulder is killing me. What should I do? I don't think I can keep this up much longer.” Uncle John was worried. He'd had another assistant years ago, who had similar symptoms. He had been diagnosed with RSI and not worked for months. “Go see a doctor and physio tomorrow . You should have said something sooner. I don't want you getting sick on me.”
John was right. The doctor diagnosed strain of the rotator cuff and advised Kelly she needed physio twice a week. She also needed to change her job while she recovered. The medical certificate said she was not to lift anything at all above shoulder height or perform other lifts of objects over 10 kilos. When Kelly described how she used the bun rounder he ruled that out too.
John thought about the tasks he could offer. He faxed through the page of the job dictionary to the doctor and rang his insurer for further advice. With their input he decided Kelly could still use the moulder and place the bread on the trays. She could also do some of the fancy rolls that involved only light rolling and hand work. He also added light cleaning to her current list of duties. But something had to be done about the job so it wouldn't happen again as soon as she went back to it.
John thought about the problem. Unfortunately there were going to be some things Kelly would just not be able to do. She should be able to load trays into the oven as long as they didn't go over chest height. While recovering, any fully laden trays higher than this would just have to be lifted by someone taller and stronger. He decided to write a safe work procedure for handling trays and make sure all staff were trained and doing it properly. He also reviewed the job requirements of all his staff. Manual handling was a recurring issue in the bakery and Kelly's problem made him realise an individual approach was needed. Each staff member had different limits. He also wrote safe work procedures for every manual handling task, including recommending no lifting of any bags of flour greater than 16 kilograms. Kelly's scooping technique could be learned by everyone.
The bun rounder was more problematic. ‘The old dalek' as he affectionately called it, was heavy work. When he though about it, he didn't remember it being as difficult a few years ago. He checked his records and discovered the machine hadn't been serviced for over two years. He quickly made the call and got the fellow in. When he was done, it was much easier to use. While it still needed some force, at least the levers didn't tend to stick any more. He also decided to give Kelly extra training and supervision to make sure she was using it right.
Gradually Kelly's shoulder improved and she was able to return to her full duties. With Uncle John's changes she found the work much easier. And she hadn't missed a day of work!
