Blog 5

As future healthcare practitioners, it is important for us to practice, exemplify and teach proper posture and body mechanics to those around us. Posture is simply defined as the relationship of the body parts to each other and the body’s base of support. Not maintaining a proper posture can be extremely problematic to a person’s health. 

It is important we stress good posture. A poor posture can increase work on the heart, place extra stress on the vertebral column, pelvis and lower extremities, and greatly reduce stability. Postural problems can also cause abnormal development of bone, muscle, tendons and other soft tissue. When the body is in a position for prolonged periods of time, stresses are put on the bone, and muscles that the structures are normally not used to. Contractures of muscle, tendon, ligaments, and other soft tissues and be a major side effect as well. Finally, decreased awareness of body positions, due to sensory loss can be a result of poor posture. By implementing proper posture, we can help to decrease these problems that are associated with faulty posture and poor body mechanics.

In teaching proper body mechanics and posture, it is important to educate our clients about the risks of injury in different activities that they may participate in every day. Lifting for example is an activity that can cause serious injury if not performed correctly. We can teach our clients a golfer’s lift. This lift is when the weight is counter balanced over the femur. The spine is kept straight and the spine can be supported by holding onto a surface. This would be good to implement in clients that have a posture that may need to be remediated. Another thing we may teach our future clients is to hold any load close to our bodies. When the load is held far away from the body it places more stress on the back and can therefore cause injury.