What Is Considered 'Repetitive'?

Saturday, March 25, 2006 | 0

Excellent question and the "community" does not have a single answer. By community, I am referring to those whose work entails analyzing jobs as well as those who work with these evaluations, measurements and assessments such as physicians, chiropractors, physical therapists, etc. and job analysts.

There is a long-standing traditional problem. Physicians do not use the same terminology as job analysts. A doctor's report comes out using words such as "prolonged" or "repetitive", but JA's use words such as "continuous", "frequent", etc. For some unknown reason, doctors have not acquired the terms used by the job analysts and issue reports using completely different terminology.

Here's the most commonly used key for analyzing frequency of physical job demands based on an 8 hour work day:
Never: does not ever occur
RARELY: Present, but not on a regular basis.
OCCASIONAL: 1% - 33% or approximately 0 - 2.64 hours.
FREQUENT: 34% - 66% or approximately 2.72 - 5.28 hours.
CONTINUOUS: 67% - 100% or approximately 5.36 - 8.00 hours.

HIGHLY REPETITIVE= Repeating the same motion every few seconds with little or no variation for more than two hours total per day.

REPETITIVE = a motion that occurs every few seconds with little or no variation.

Basically, however, there is no standard definition for repetitive. Consider the following:

1. According to OSHA Ergonomic Guides, ,a highly repetitive job can be characterized by one of the following: A cycle time less than 30 seconds. Over 1,000 parts per shift, or more than 50% of the cycle time involving the same kind of fundamental cycle.

2. A Canadian Researcher, D.B. Caruthers, wrote - "Repetition as a quantitative description of work duties should be considered only if the task in question constitutes greater than 2/3 of the work shift." This takes "repetitive" into the "Continuous" category.

3. Other literature suggests that one must take into consideration the body part. For example, frequency and duration of activities of the trunk may require different "work restrictions" than for activities of the finger.

4. The other problem is that the key above, does not take into account, "duration". For example, if an employee is precluded from repetitive bending and twisting and he works as a delivery driver. Each morning he spends an hour loading his van requiring him to load a dolly, and unload it into a delivery van. During that hour, he is bending and twisting as he works. But then he drives, and makes 4 delivery/pick-ups per hour until he returns to the warehouse at the end of the shift. To bend down, pick up a package, twist and place into the van requries less than 30 seconds per occurrence, i.e., just a few moments at a time. Therefore, it is not prolonged, but it is repetitive over his first hour of the shift, then occasional throughout the day.

SUGGESTIONS:

A. Get a REALLY GOOD Job Analysis. There should be short narratives describing physical demands, i.e., walking - occasionally throughout the day, up to 20 minutes per occurence... etc.

B. Get the doctor to define what he/she means. What is THEIR INTERPRETATION of the terms, "prolonged" and "repetitive".

C. Re-address the doctor to respond to specific abilities of the employee. E.g., ask the doctor to provide opinion about the employee's ability to stand or sit for up to 1 hour per occurrence. If not, how long? Etc.

D. Be specific.

E. Do no allow physicians to make employment decisions. Get the data from the physician. Match the data to the job analysis, and make a determination about whether this job is within this employee's ABILITY.

F. Hire an expert...

G. Better to do this now than in Superior Court on the witness stand for a FEHA suit.

Article adapted from a post in the California Professional WorkCompForums by Adrienne L. Malka, CPDM, RRSW
www.choiceresourcesgroup.com

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The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of workcompcentral.com, its editors or management.