Shoulder/back pain from sitting at desk

LegacyUser

Hello,

I started a desk job (never had one previously) at the end of last year. I soon began to suffer upper shoulder/back pain on my right hand side. I chalked this down to not being used to sitting at a desk initially and ignored it. It did not go away so I tried everything I could think of - I corrected my posture, I adjusted my chair, I took frequent breaks etc. I was away from work for a few weeks and had a wonderful pain-free time. Upon return, it instantly became sore again. It does not hurt at weekends, it only hurts during working hours (and remaining pain for a little while afterwards in the evening). I have been attending a physio for several weeks who has confirmed it is an injury from sitting at my desk and using the desktop computer. I mentioned it to work recently and some changes have been made and they are providing an upcoming ergonomic assessment.

However, there is no end in sight to my treatment with the physio and I am becoming increasingly stressed and worried. I have not seen any major improvement in the few weeks, nor any improvement with the changes at work. I am aware that my injury seems to be severe enough but I am now very worried about the cost of physio as it is very expensive to attend every week. I do have health insurance but they will only cover a certain portion and I cannot claim that money for a while obviously. I am in pain all day, every day and it is very distracting and uncomfortable when trying to focus on work. I am worried that it will never get better! I am only in my 20s and I can't understand this pain. I have never had problems sitting at desks previously although I had very limited desktop computer use and mostly used a laptop sitting at home for study/leisure. Now it even hurts to write though.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for exactly but does anyone know if there is anything else I should do in this situation? Should I talk more seriously to someone at work? Is there anything else they can do? I have avoided mentioning it as much as possible as do not want to be a hassle, particularly when I'm fairly new to the company. What if there is no improvement after the ergonomic assessment? I don't want to have to give up working this job but I'm now so stressed over this that this is what I fear! I just don't know what I can do and I would appreciate any advice, tips or experiences.

Mrs OBumble

There is lots which can be tried, and very likely something which will help.

You absolutely need to talk seriously to your manager and/or HR - and you are well out of order in not having raised this properly when the problem became apparent.

The ergonomic assessment needs to be treated as urgent, and recommendations from it followed. If it cannot be organised quickly (eg tomorrow), then you should also visit your GP, who will assess if you should be signed out sick until it can be done.

Irish_Elect_Eng

You need to deal with this immediately.

(1) Insist on the Ergonomic assessment tomorrow. It is essential to identify the root cause. If your EHS folks cannot do it immediately do a bit of research and then ask a co-worker to observe your working tomorrow and suggest changes.

(2) It may seem obvious but put all the suggested preventative measure in place and follow them going forward, RSI will return is a very short space of time if you revert to bad habits.

(3) There are a lot of good resources on the internet, what I found very useful when recovering from RSI was stretching exercises, short bursts throughout the work day without overdoing ti. But you may need something different depending on where the issue is.

For folks using mice all day that are not used to it, vertical mice and track-balls can offer a better option or indeed a better quality mouse. I use a vertical mouse, 2 of my team use trackballs for CAD work and a couple more swear by high quality gaming mice, the rest have no issues with normal mice.

Diziet

I had exactly the same problem, and changes after an ergonomic assessment sorted it. The assessor changed the height of my desk and the height of my chair (it was a tiny bit high and I was crunching my shoulder to use the keyboard and mouse). She moved everything (keyboard, mouse, phone) closer to the front of the desk, and switched the phone (or mouse, I don't recall) to the other side. She also got me a phone headset.

It worked like magic, the pain was gone within a couple of days. I had been having physio, stretching, having breaks, etc, but was undoing all the good work the minute I sat down. And that was after I had made what I thought were all the adjustments I could make.