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Slow down - you'll do yourself an injury

Posted 16 February 2012 by John Pezy (Monash University)

by Dan Wollmering, Occupational Health and Safety Rep

When one examines the Incident Analysis Matrix at Monash over several years – the number of incidents that is consistently close the top is the Sprain and Strain (slip, trip or fall) category.  To be precise, it comes in at number 4 out of 22 categories.

Common sense tell us that this should not be surprising seeing that we are always on our feet struggling against the forces of gravity – going from one place to another.  The sheer numbers of staff and students at one of Australia’s largest Universities, indicates that at some stage or another, some of us are going to be ‘tripped up’ (just physically in this context).

On the other hand, without going into the data as to why we are falling over (there is probably a good PhD in this) I suspect something else may be going on.  Quite apart from uneven terrain on our footpaths, stairs and landscapes – that for the most part is getting evened-out and repaired across campuses, I have noticed that more and more staff (academics and professional alike) seem to be rushing between venues. We can appreciate that at some stage we have had to hurry off to present a lecture or attend a meeting but in my observation, there seems to be an unusual amount of this rapid activity at Monash resulting in preventable injuries.  I should point out, that this does not include sporting injuries – which has a category of its own.

Deadlines, meetings, seminars, conferences and lectures across Monash’s five campuses can create undue and unnecessary stress. Even through the advances of technologies to eliminate such ‘face-to-face’ gatherings, we are expected to do more. Workloads are an issue here. More students, more HDR candidates, more administration, more grants, more publications, more productivity . . . the list goes on.

Seen in this light and at the beginning of a new University year ─ let’s do something positive that we can take control of and perhaps even enjoy over the long run (no pun intended). Let’s slow down!