This episode of the podcast is sponsored by NekSpine. You can learn about them and schedule a demo via https://nekspine.com/nekspine-special-offer-surgical-ergonomics-podcast/

Disclosure:

NekSpine is a paid sponsor and the affiliate link above supports the podcast at no cost to you.

Episode details:

In the operating room, ergonomics is often viewed as an individual responsibility—adjust your posture, raise the table, take a microbreak. But what if preventing injury requires something much bigger than individual habits?

About Our Guest:

Dr. Fahad Alam is an anesthesiologist, medical education researcher, and leader in clinical ergonomics research at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University of Toronto. Together, we explore the emerging concept of team ergonomics and why improving the physical, cognitive, and organizational environment of the operating room requires every member of the surgical team. Drawing from groundbreaking research conducted with Dr. Julie Hallet and colleagues, Dr. Alam discusses the alarming prevalence of musculoskeletal pain among operating room professionals, the lack of formal ergonomics education across healthcare training, and how psychological safety influences whether clinicians feel comfortable speaking up about ergonomic concerns. We also discuss innovative approaches to changing OR culture through simulation, virtual reality, ergonomic checklists, and team communication strategies that have the potential to improve both clinician well-being and patient safety. Whether you're a surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurse, trainee, or healthcare leader, this episode highlights why ergonomics should be viewed as a shared responsibility—and how small changes in teamwork may have a lasting impact on career longevity.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why musculoskeletal pain affects the majority of operating room professionals—not just surgeons.
• How physical strain, cognitive workload, and organizational culture all contribute to ergonomic risk.
• Why ergonomics should be viewed as a team responsibility rather than an individual problem.
• What Dr. Alam's research revealed about the prevalence of pain and the lack of ergonomics education among OR staff.
• How psychological safety influences whether clinicians feel comfortable speaking up about ergonomic concerns.
• The role of simulation training and virtual reality in teaching team ergonomics.
• How ergonomic checklists and communication frameworks may improve teamwork and reduce injury risk.
• Practical ways surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and trainees can support one another during cases.
• Why investing in team ergonomics has the potential to improve clinician well-being, performance, and patient safety.

Resources

You can reach Dr. Fahad Alam via:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fahad-alam-244796152/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.alam_md/?hl=en

Publications discussed in this episode:

The Society of Surgical Ergonomics publications on team ergonomics and the SORE (Simulation for Operating Room Ergonomics) Study. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39502068/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40794621/

Previous episode with Dr. Julie Hallet on surgical ergonomics. https://surgicalergonomics.com/2025/08/25/team-ergonomics-and-the-ergonomics-time-out-with-dr-julie-hallet/

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.

Episode Details:

Many surgeons and proceduralists live with chronic neck, shoulder, jaw, or headache pain without realizing that the true source may lie elsewhere.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Hannah Park, fellowship-trained headache neurologist and founder of Park Your Headache, to explore the fascinating world of myofascial pain. Hannah shares her deeply personal journey from aspiring concert pianist whose career was ended by repetitive strain injuries to becoming a physician dedicated to helping others with chronic pain.

Together, we discuss why so many healthcare professionals struggle to obtain an accurate diagnosis, why imaging is often normal despite severe symptoms, and how understanding trigger points, referred pain, and muscle compensation patterns can transform treatment.

Whether you're a surgeon, proceduralist or anyone living with persistent muscle pain, this conversation will help you better understand your body, and why effective treatment often requires looking beyond where it hurts.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why myofascial pain is frequently overlooked or misdiagnosed

• How repetitive strain and sustained postures create chronic muscle dysfunction

• Why trigger points can produce pain far away from their actual location

• The relationship between headaches, neck pain, jaw pain, and trapezius muscle dysfunction

• Why normal imaging doesn't rule out significant pain

• The importance of finding clinicians with specialized expertise in headache medicine and myofascial pain

• How injection therapies fit into a comprehensive treatment approach

• Why chronic pain develops over years—and why recovery also requires patience

• The surprising similarities between musicians, surgeons, and other high-performance professionals

Resources Learn more about Dr. Hannah Park:

Website: www.parkyourheadachenj.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-l-park-m-d-b555b729b

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Smart Step Surgical LLC. You can learn about them and schedule a demo via https://www.smartstepsurgical.com/blogs/news/surgical-ergonomic-podcast-promotional-discount

Disclosure:

Smart Step Surgical is a paid sponsor and the affiliate link above supports the podcast at no cost to you. They also provide our podcast listeners with a discount (20%), so we hope that it is a win-win!

Episode details:

What starts as "just another ache" can gradually become a career-ending injury. Whether you're early in training or decades into practice, this episode is a reminder that taking care of your body isn't a luxury—it's an investment in your career longevity.

About Our Guest

Dr. Melanie Seybt is a board-certified Otolaryngologist with fellowship training in head and neck endocrine surgery. She has been on faculty at the Medical College of Georgia as an Assistant professor where she also served as the co-director of the MCG Thyroid Center. She subsequently practiced as a high volume thyroid and parathyroid surgeon with Palmetto ENT and Allergy in South Carolina. After years in practice, repetitive work-related shoulder injuries ultimately forced her into early retirement from clinical work. She now advocates for greater awareness of surgical ergonomics, career longevity, and protecting surgeons from preventable musculoskeletal injuries.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why persistent shoulder pain should never be dismissed as "part of being a surgeon."
• How repetitive overhead work contributed to multiple rotator cuff tears and failed repairs.
• The hidden ergonomic challenges faced by many ENT and endocrine surgeons.
• Why women surgeons may face additional ergonomic risks related to stature, equipment design, and midlife hormonal changes.
• How small ergonomic changes, such as proper positioning and height adjustments, might reduce long-term injury risk.
• Why surgeons often delay seeking care, underestimate recovery time, and continue working despite significant injury.
• The emotional impact of losing a surgical identity and navigating medical retirement.
• What every surgeon should know about disability insurance, documentation, and protecting their future career.

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Sunoptic Surgical. You can learn about them and schedule a demo via https://sunopticsurgical.com/surgicalergonomics/

Disclosure:

Sunoptic Surgical is a paid sponsor and the affiliate link above supports the podcast at no cost to you.

When we think about surgical ergonomics, we often focus on posture, equipment, and operating room setup. But what if one of the biggest contributors to fatigue, performance, and musculoskeletal strain is something we rarely consider—the visual environment?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Hillevi Hemphälä Assistant Professor at Lund University and one of the world's leading experts in visual ergonomics. Drawing on her unique background as both an optometrist and lighting designer, she explains how lighting influences not only what we see, but how we perform, feel, and function in the operating room.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Dr. Hemphälä's journey from optometrist to visual ergonomics researcher led her to uncover the important relationship between lighting, performance, and musculoskeletal health.
• Why poor operating room lighting affects more than visual comfort—and how glare and excessive brightness may contribute to fatigue, workflow challenges, and patient safety.
• The fascinating research demonstrating that eye strain is associated with increased neck and shoulder muscle activity, providing another pathway by which poor visual environments may contribute to work-related musculoskeletal disorders.
• Why "more light" isn't always better, including the surprising finding that healthcare workers may require up to two minutes to fully recover visual performance after exposure to excessively bright surgical lighting.
• Practical recommendations for improving lighting in both open and minimally invasive operating rooms, including strategies that healthcare organizations can implement to create safer and more ergonomic work environments.
• Simple techniques you can use to identify glare and problematic LED flicker in your own office or workspace, and what to do about it.

Articles referenced:

Visual Ergonomics in Open surgery: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1477153520903355

VERAM https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-74605-6_92

Dr. Hemphala thanks the Bertil och Britt Svenssons Stiftelse för Belysningsteknik (Bertil and Britt Svensson’s Foundation for Illumination Technology) for financial support.

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Sunoptic Surgical. You can learn about them and schedule a demo via https://sunopticsurgical.com/surgicalergonomics/

Disclosure:

Sunoptic Surgical is a paid sponsor and the affiliate link above supports the podcast at no cost to you.

Dr. Deborah Kacmarynski, is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Iowa, working at Stead Family Children’s Hospital as a pediatric otolaryngologist and a cleft and craniofacial surgeon with co-directorship for the cleft and craniofacial team. Her research focuses on biomedical collaborations with oral cleft and craniofacial surgical problems including craniofacial airway, tissue engineering solution development, outcomes research and patient-centered outcomes research collaboratives. Prior to medicine, she worked as a biomedical engineer in process and product development at 3M Company which continues to influence her approach to improving patient care, surgeries and processes.

In this episode, Dr. Kacmarynski:

- Shares her journey from being an engineer at 3M to becoming a pediatric otolaryngologist

- Describes how her interest in surgical ergonomics evolved very early in training and practice due to a combination of her attention to safety as an engineer, underlying conditions and her desire to preserve her function through the rigors of surgical training

- Shares how she ensures that her trainees understand the importance of basic interventions such as attention to changing posture, taking breaks and stretches inside and outside the OR

- Provides her routine for good ergonomics - setting cases up differently, adopting deflection loupes, physical therapy exercises, massage therapy etc.

- Shares how learners and surgical leaders can take the lead on driving increased attention to physical being and ergonomics in procedural workspaces

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Smart Step Surgical LLC. You can learn about them and schedule a demo via https://www.smartstepsurgical.com/blogs/news/surgical-ergonomic-podcast-promotional-discount

Disclosure:

Smart Step Surgical is a paid sponsor and the affiliate link above supports the podcast at no cost to you. They also provide our podcast listeners with a discount (20%), so we hope that it is a win-win!

Dr. David Berger is a physician executive and former hospital CEO turned digital health advisor — helping early-stage startups and healthcare investors navigate the complexity of building and scaling in the healthcare system. With 30+ years of leadership experience in care delivery, he now works with founders and VCs to bring clinically sound, operationally feasible innovation to market.

In this episode Dr. Berger:

- Shares details about his career pivots, including his journey dealing with work-related MSK issues

- Describes how he navigated coming back to work after the multiple surgeries he needed, including altering his practice from full-scale surgical oncology to do mainly shorter cases due to ongoing symptoms

- Discusses how hospital leaders (including Chairs of Surgery) can and should track lost days of work from MSK injury and support initiatives aimed at improving ergonomics in procedural specialties.

- Shares why and how surgical societies, including the American College of Surgeons and the ACGME can take steps to highlight the issue of the high rates of MSK injuries among surgeons

You can reach Dr. Berger via his Linked in profile here.

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Sunoptic Surgical. You can learn about them and schedule a demo via https://sunopticsurgical.com/surgicalergonomics/

Disclosure:

Sunoptic Surgical is a paid sponsor and the affiliate link above supports the podcast at no cost to you.

Dr. Sara White is a veterinarian and has worked in mixed animal, small animal, shelter medicine and High-Quality, High-Volume Spay Neuter (HQHVSN) practices. Since 2006, Sara has operated Spay ASAP Inc, a nonprofit MASH-style mobile spay/neuter clinic. While working in spay-neuter, Sara developed an interest in ergonomics, health, wellbeing, and injury in veterinarians and staff, and completed a Masters of Science in Health Ergonomics from University of Derby in the UK. She has been named Veterinarian of the Year by the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, coauthored the Association of Shelter Veterinarians Spay Neuter Guidelines and is the editor of the textbook High-Quality, High-Volume Spay and Neuter and Other Shelter Surgeries

In this episode, Dr. White:

- Shares her journey into working in a high-volume spay/neuter practice and how that sparked her interest in ergonomics

-Describes the high rate of work-related MSK injuries among veterinarians and especially those in high volume spay-neuter practices. The period prevalence of MSD was 99.1%, with 76.7% experiencing hand or wrist pain and 98.2% experiencing body pain. Further details can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/3/1/85

- Emphasizes that increasing career length, increasing weekly hours in surgery and decreasing job satisfaction were the work-related factors with the greatest relative risk of hand pain severity and total pain. Interestingly, gender differences were not as prominent in her study, possibly because of the lack of instrument and hand size mismatch in the veterinary population

- Shares that there wasn't any formal ergonomics training when she trained in veterinary medicine, however, there is now some incorporation of ergonomics teaching in programs and textbooks

- Describes her journey into coaching veterinarians about ergonomics

You can reach Dr. White via her website ergovet.com or via LinkedIn

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.

Dr. Christopher Perkes is an Anesthesiologist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. His non-clinical pursuits have included serving as an Anesthesia Medical Director (Quinte Health), Premesis Inspection Committee member for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, and delivering a Canadian Anesthesiology Society presentation on Ergonomics for the Anesthesiologist. His interest in ergonomics began in 2018 when he suffered a back injury that threatened his career.

In this episode, Dr. Perkes:

- Shares how his own injury (herniated L5/S1 intervertebral disc) sparked his interest in ergonomics

- Discusses the ergonomic risks faced by anesthesia providers in their daily work and the factors that keep people from getting help when their symptoms first develop

- Emphazised the importance of working with a specialist (physical therapist, occupational therapist or ergonomist) to analyze our postures in our workflow

- Outlines practical steps that practitioners can take to set up their environment ergonomically and also advocate for ergonomic equipment

- Shared his thoughts on how good ergonomics can be incorporated into residency training and practicing providers

Follow Surgical Ergonomics on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube please reach out to us if you have any suggestions regarding episode ideas and guests or if you'd like to be a guest on the podcast

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a colleague or your perioperative team to help bring greater awareness to the role of ergonomics in career longevity. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd be grateful if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews help others discover the show and support our mission of improving the health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists worldwide.