Surgical Ergonomics

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:

• Change how you frame the problem — Move the conversation beyond wellness and toward occupational risk, career longevity, workforce sustainability, and retention.
• Bring local data — Learn how collecting information about the ergonomic challenges experienced by your own surgeons, proceduralists, trainees, and OR teams can help demonstrate that ergonomics is a workplace issue.
• Find partners — Identify people across your institution who can help address ergonomic challenges, including OR leadership, occupational health, physical and occupational therapy, nursing, workplace safety, and quality and safety teams.
• Start with a specific problem — Rather than immediately proposing a comprehensive ergonomics program, begin with one concrete issue, assessment, pilot project, equipment evaluation, or educational intervention.
• Don't stop at education — Understand why education is important but cannot compensate for poorly designed workspaces, equipment, instruments, or workflows, and why the goal should be to make the work environment function better for the people in it.

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:

• How years of static, forward-leaning postures can affect surgeons over time.
• Dr. Kim's personal experience with changing posture and operating-related pain.
• How his conversations with biomedical engineer Roger Malcolm led to the idea for a surgical exoskeleton.
• What an exoskeleton is and how it can support the body during less-than-ideal working positions.
• The challenges involved in developing an exoskeleton specifically for surgeons.
• Why headaches became an important problem to solve during the early development of the device.
• How carbon fiber and other design changes contributed to the evolution of NekSpine.
• How the device provides support for the neck and lumbar region.
• The challenges of bringing an ergonomic innovation from an early prototype to a commercially available product.
• What research has examined the effects of NekSpine, including studies involving posture and muscle activity.
• Why exoskeletons should be viewed as one potential tool rather than a single solution to surgical ergonomics.
• Why introducing ergonomics and career longevity concepts earlier in surgical training may be important.

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

• RULA (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment)
• REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment)
• PoseChecker by EWI Works

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:

• 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.