Ergonomic considerations loom large as hospitals and other health care organizations rapidly adopt IT tools.

Unless hospitals and other health care organizations change course, they can expect to see a steep rise in repetitive strain injuries among providers related to the adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems and other IT tools, according to ergonomic experts.They urge hospital and ED administrators to consider how and where technology will be used when planning IT installations, and to take steps to ensure that workstations, mobile devices, and other IT tools are used properly, with minimal provider discomfort. Researchers queried 179 physicians about their computer use, finding that a majority of female physicians and more than 40% of male physicians were suffering from upper-body repetitive strain ailments on at least a weekly basis. Ergonomic experts say that hospitals and other health care organizations need to heed the missteps of other industries that computerized in the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in a flood of repetitive strain injuries.