Overview

What Is RSI?

Repetitive strain injury (RSI) refersr to various kinds of injuries to muscles, tendons or nerves. These injuries are caused by repetitive movement of parts of the upper body including the forearm, elbow, wrist, hands, and neck.

As the more people use computers more people are developing RSI. The repetitive action of typing on a computer can cause throbbing pain. pain in fingers and hands. RSI caused by typing on a computer is sometimes known as 'writer's cramp'.

Impact of Environment

Your working environment will have the most impact on your RSI. For example:

1. If you work at a computer all day, make sure your seat, keyboard, mouse, and screen are positioned so that they cause you the least amount of strain to your fingers, hands, wrists, neck and back.

2. Sit at your desk with a good posture. Adjust your chair so that your forearms are horizontal with the desk, and that your eyes are the same height as the top of your computer screen.
3. If you do a repetitive task at work try to take plenty of regular breaks. It is better to take more frequent smaller breaks than just one long break at lunch.
Source: NHS Direct

Intoducing Breaktime v2

As part of the company Health and Safety, an employer can provide well designed workstations and train staff on useage and good posture. There is however a dificulty in enforcing regular breaks from the computer, and even in a break an employee may decide to browse the internet or look at photos and so never leaves the workstation for long.

Breaktime v2 is an application to assist with the control of Health and Saftey policy encoraging users to take regular breaks from the computers at specified times. A log is kept of wether the user accepted or rejected the break. If the break is accepted the start bar is removed and the user is unable to access their pc for the length of the break. In addition Breaktime is programmed to provide regular breaks at intervals suggested by your Health and Safety Guidelines.

If an employee attempted to claim RSI damages as the employee you can proove that the design of the workstation met health and safety guidelines and that the employee was sent on training courses for posture and now using breaktime you can also proove that you have tried to enforce the employee to take regular breaks from their workstation, through the logfiles produced by Breaktime.

Building on the success of Breaktime v1

Breaktime v1 was a freeware application. Within 18 months a user base of over 15,000 users worldwide was established. Due to its popularity it became clear that clients were using the software in different ways. Breaktime was rewritten in .Net based architecture to facilitate with deploymnet to Microsoft Windows Vista, and provide the ability to introduce different features dependent on company size.

Breaktime v2, is now available in two versions, Personal and SME. Currently under development is a Corporate Version which is schelduled for realease in Quarter 4 of 2007.

Useful Links

For more information about the impact of break enforcement JPAF Consulting have provided the following links.

If you press "Click Here" on any of the hyperlinks below will be leaving the JPAF Consulting website. JPAF Consulting is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Source		Requires
NHS Direct: About RSI	Click Here	Web Browser
UK Government HSE Free booklet on RSI	Click Here	Adobe PDF
UK Government Free HSE Video on avoiding RSI	Click Here	Windows Media Player
Norwich Union - the cost of RSI	Click Here	Browser