Save Your Hands!® Injury Prevention & Ergonomics for Manual Therapists

In my last post I wrote about the time it takes to master a skill, and how the average massage therapist isn’t in the profession long enough to truly reach that level. A few folks left some good comments about the factors that can shorter massage careers – mostly burn-out, injury, and lack of financial success.

All three factors are inter-related in a way. Striving for too much financial success too quickly can lead to burn-out and injury. The emotional strain that accompanies burn-out can lead to physical problems that can make injury more likely. And a serious injury comes with both emotional and financial consequences.

So what can we do as a profession to address these concerns and improve the longevity of therapists? I’d like to share my ideas on the subject starting with this post, and hopefully generate some discussion.

I believe that the solution begins with massage schools. Think back to when you were in massage school. If you were like me you didn’t know anything about massage. I had benefitted from receiving several good massages, and I’d given a few “back rubs,” but other than that I was pretty clueless. I looked to my instructors to teach me how to give a massage, and trusted them to teach me how to do it well. Fortunately, I went to a very good school that stressed working safely and being realistic in my business goals.

Students in massage school go there because they are ready to learn. That makes it the best time to teach them everything they need to become successful therapists, including how to take care of themselves. This needs to be part of the curriculum from the beginning, not a special “self care weekend.” Making self care a separate topic can create the impression that it’s a secondary consideration, a nice thing to do for yourself if you have the time.

Instead, instructors should incorporate concepts like good body mechanics and using less stressful techniques into the way they teach basic massage. The message should be: “This is the way massage work is done. We use our bodies to their best advantage, and we work within ourselves.” If there’s a student clinic, sessions can be scheduled to gradually increase the number of clients students see. The message here is: “Don’t try to do too much, too soon.”

This approach benefits the schools as well as the students. Most massage schools are already trying to fit in all of the required topics into the number of hours that students are willing to pay for. Asking them to teach self care as an additional topic would mean having to give up teaching something that may be equally as important. Integrating self care as core concept in a massage curriculum wouldn’t take up any more time, and should result in graduates who are better prepared for a long career in massage. And what better advertisement could there be for a massage school than having the most experienced and successful therapists practicing in the local area?

As always, your comments are welcome.

In addition to blogging about injury prevention and self-care topics for students and therapists, we also want to talk about teaching these topics in massage school. So we’d like to invite massage instructors, education directors, school administrators, etc. to participate in this blog, too. Ideally, massage therapists and bodyworkers would develop good work practices, awareness of risk factors, good body mechanics and excellent self-care practices from the very start. That means from day one of their massage training. So talking about how these things are taught in school is really important.

There are lots of schools out there that are already incorporating effective injury prevention and self-care into their curriculum. But we do hear from lots of students and recent grads that their school did not give them enough information on this subject, and they feel quite disappointed by that. I think it’s important for schools to realize that prospective students are looking for schools that teach them not only how to do massage, but how to be successful as a massage therapist and have a career that lasts as long as they want it to. Students are investing a lot of money in their training, and they want the school to help them protect that investment. And a big part of being successful is being able to avoid symptoms and injury that can interfere with their career and their ability to make a living. Years ago, the fact that there is a high rate of injury among massage therapists wasn’t well-known – now, every magazine has articles about the importance of self-care and preventing injury (Rick and I write lots of them ourselves). So even people who are thinking about going to massage school know that this is important. So whether the school includes comprehensive information on injury prevention (going far beyond just using good body mechanics), or not, can make the difference between a student choosing that school, or not.

Given that fact, I would like to encourage schools not only to include comprehensive injury prevention information in their curriculum (and we’ll be talking more about how to do that in other posts – it’s easier than you may think), but to let prospective students know that they do. Put it in your promotional materials, on your web site – it’s a great value-add for your school, a wonderful benefit for your students – it really does give your school a competitive advantage! So advertise it proudly. If you let prospective students know that you care enough about their health and long-term success in their new career to provide this vital information, they WILL appreciate it, choose your school, and then recommend your school to others when they graduate. More to come!