In today's video, Brian Boyle, PT/DPT, talks about job coaching. What is job coaching, and what does good job coaching look like?

Education in a Positive Safety Culture

Ongoing education is a critical element in creating a positive safety culture. Regular job coaching is one aspect of that education. Well, it starts with the post-offer employment test. Job coaching is where an onsite physical therapist can go out to the floor or the warehouse wherever the production site, wherever that employee may be, and provide an opportunity to give best practices for the physical aspects of the job. It's not looking at policy and procedures. It's not reviewing step by step of the processes necessary to ensure that there's good quality product coming out in a timely fashion. Those things are certainly important but not what we're talking about with job coaching.  

We are talking about the opportunity for the therapist to discuss best practices for body mechanics, lifting for movement, for positioning. Those are the things that are going to help in the long term prevent injuries from happening in the first place. The hope is that learning how to do these things efficiently and understand how to do them correctly over time will again allow the individual to remain injury-free.