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About Our Guest
Dr. Anjali Joseph is the Spartanburg Regional Health System Endowed Chair in Architecture and Health Design and Director of the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing at Clemson University.
Her research focuses on using simulation and prototyping methods to evaluate design solutions that improve patient safety in high-stress healthcare environments. Through multidisciplinary approaches, she studies how the built environment influences patient safety, staff performance, workflow, and overall health and well-being.
Dr. Joseph has worked extensively at the intersection of healthcare design, human behavior, and patient safety. Her work includes research on operating room design, workflow disruptions, and the development and evaluation of safer, more ergonomic healthcare environments.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Resources Mentioned
1. Clemson University – Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing
Access the three free volumes of RIPCHD.OR (Research and Innovation in Patient Care and Health Design – Operating Room). These resources summarize research, design principles, and guidelines for operating room design.
https://open.clemson.edu/chfdt/
2. OR Flow Mapping Toolkit
A resource to help healthcare teams understand and evaluate movement and workflow within the operating room.
https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/health-facilities-design-testing/files/flow-mapping-toolkit.pdf
3. The Clemson Healthcare Work System Ergonomic Assessment Toolkit
A resource for evaluating ergonomic features of healthcare workspaces, including computer workstation configurations and their integration into the broader work system.
https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/health-facilities-design-testing/files/the-clemson-healthcare-system-ergonomic.pdf
4. Interactive 3D Operating Room Mock-Up
Explore the physical operating room mock-up developed through Dr. Joseph's research using this interactive 3D walkthrough.
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=RZPzh1SgKxV
The operating room is more than a space where procedures take place. It is a complex environment where people, equipment, technology, and workflows come together.
As Dr. Joseph reminds us, we cannot simply train healthcare professionals to work around poorly designed environments. We need to design spaces that support the people working in them.
And that starts with involving clinicians in the design process.
Connect with Dr. Anjali Joseph
You can learn more about Dr. Joseph and her work through the following channels:
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.
About Our Guest
Dr. Amandeep Shergill is a gastroenterologist and Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her work focuses on endoscopic ergonomics and preventing musculoskeletal injuries among endoscopy professionals. She also co-founded the UCSF–UC Berkeley Center for Ergonomic Endoscopy, which advances research and education in this important area.
Episode Overview
Musculoskeletal pain and injury are common among endoscopists, yet ergonomic risks can often go unrecognized. In this episode, Dr. Shergill discusses the physical demands of endoscopy, the importance of proper equipment and procedure-room setup, and practical strategies for reducing strain. She introduces the MYSELF checklist, a simple approach to improving ergonomics before each procedure, and explains how clinicians can advocate for institutional support and better-designed equipment.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Resources Mentioned
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
In this episode of the Surgical Ergonomics Podcast, Dr. Geeta Lal discusses one of the questions she hears most often: How do I get my institution to take surgical ergonomics seriously?
While individual strategies such as improving posture, stretching, exercising, and taking microbreaks are important, sustainable surgical careers require more than individual effort. The workplace environment, equipment, workflow, and institutional culture all play an important role in supporting the physical health and longevity of surgeons and proceduralists.
Dr. Lal shares five practical strategies for building institutional support for surgical ergonomics and discusses why ergonomics should be viewed as an occupational and workforce sustainability issue—not simply an individual wellness responsibility.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Resource Mentioned
Developing Specialty-Specific Workplace Standards for Sustainable Surgical Careers
This episode references the work surrounding specialty-specific workplace standards and the importance of creating conditions that support sustainable surgical careers.
Read the article in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons
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:
In this episode of the Surgical Ergonomics Podcast, Dr. Daniel Kim shares his personal journey with the physical demands of operating and how his own experience with neck and back strain ultimately led to the development of a surgical exoskeleton.
He shares how early prototypes evolved, the challenges of designing a system that surgeons would actually want to wear, and why addressing issues such as headaches, comfort, mobility, and durability was essential.
About Our Guest:
Dr. Daniel Kim is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Plastic Surgery at the University of California, Irvine and has been practicing plastic surgery for more than 25 years. He maintains a private practice in California and specializes in secondary breast surgery, facial surgery, and total body rejuvenation procedures. He is also a co-inventor of NekSpine, a commercially available neck and back exoskeleton designed for surgeons. His interest in surgical ergonomics grew from his own experience with the physical demands of operating and his collaboration with biomedical engineer Mr. Roger Malcolm.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Resources mentioned: You can learn more about NekSpine and special pricing for podcast listeners here:https://nekspine.com/nekspine-special-offer-surgical-ergonomics-podcast/
Articles evaluating NekSpine:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40201977/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41755295/
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:
In this episode, we explore how ergonomic risk can be measured in surgical and procedural environments, and why simply asking surgeons whether they are experiencing pain or discomfort may not tell the whole story.
About Our Guest:
Dr. Ali Golabchi is the Chief Technology Officer and Director of Research at EWI Works International, Inc., Western Canada's leading ergonomics and wellness company. Ali joined EWI Works in 2016, where he oversees the development and adoption of technology-based, data-powered, science-driven solutions to improve health, safety, and productivity. His work focuses on bridging the gap between academic research and real-world application, using emerging technologies to address practical ergonomic challenges.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why measuring ergonomic risk is important instead of relying solely on surgeons' reports of pain or discomfort.
- The difference between qualitative and quantitative approaches to measuring ergonomic risk.
- What RULA and REBA are, how these observational tools work, and some of their limitations in surgical environments.
- Why the operating room presents unique challenges for ergonomic measurement, including sterility, limited space, complex workflows, PPE, privacy, and multiple people in the surgical field.
- The difference between marker-based, wearable sensor, and markerless motion capture systems.
- How AI and computer vision can be used to analyze posture and movement from a standard video recording.
- The story behind the development of PoseCheckerTM and how it evolved from research technology into a practical tool for ergonomic assessment.
- How vision-based motion capture can potentially be used to evaluate ergonomic interventions by comparing risk before and after changes to equipment, workflow, or technique.
- What Ali sees as the future of ergonomic risk assessment, including AI-powered tools, exoskeletons, wearable robots, and more proactive approaches to ergonomics.
Resources Mentioned
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:
In healthcare, patient safety and clinician well-being are often approached as individual responsibilities. But what if many of the problems we face are actually shaped by the systems in which we work?
About Our Guest:
Dr. Abigail Wooldridge is a human factors and ergonomics researcher whose work focuses on sociotechnical systems, team performance, and improving outcomes in healthcare. In this episode, we explore what sociotechnical systems are and why understanding the interaction between people, technology, physical environments, teamwork, and organizational structures is so important to healthcare safety. Whether you're a surgeon, healthcare professional, researcher, trainee, or healthcare leader, this episode offers a practical introduction to sociotechnical systems and the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in creating safer, more effective healthcare environments.
In this episode, you'll learn:
What sociotechnical systems are and why they matter in healthcare.
How human factors and ergonomics can address both patient safety and clinician well-being.
How people, technology, physical environments, and organizational structures interact to shape healthcare outcomes.
What Dr. Wooldridge's research on maternal hemorrhage revealed about barriers and facilitators within clinical systems.
How issues such as surgical lighting, alarm fatigue, team coordination, and role ambiguity can affect care.
Why burnout can be influenced by workload, task demands, and insufficient resources.
Why improving healthcare systems requires interdisciplinary collaboration between clinicians and human factors researchers.
How clinicians and trainees can begin exploring human factors, ergonomics, and sociotechnical systems research.
Resources
You can reach Dr. Abigail Wooldridge via:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigailwooldridge/
University profile/email: https://ise.illinois.edu/directory/profile/arwool
Publication discussed in this episode:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40077061/
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 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:
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:
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:
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.
From the publisher's feed
This podcast will discuss everything relating to surgical and procedural ergonomics i.e. the people, ideas and technology that will help enhance your physical wellness and career…