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In 2011 I took a year out to study for an MSc in Loughborough. At a crossroads in my career, I had become bored and a little disillusioned as a clinician and wanted to step into something new for a while.

When I announced my plans to study for an MSc in Ergonomics, my physio colleagues were perplexed as to how studying someone’s desk set up could possibly be stretched out over the course of an academic year, never mind how it might result in being awarded a postgraduate degree!

I wasn’t sure whether to be amused, insulted or frustrated.

I was mildly amused that my colleagues genuinely thought that I was taking a year out to study this limited topic, a little insulted that they thought I really was that boring but perhaps more frustrated at the tendency of my profession to view things through a reductionist lens. But then again, Google seems to agree with my colleagues’ view, as a quick search of the term returns a plethora of information about the dangers of sitting, lifting or even sleeping in the ‘wrong’ posture.

Ergonomics is in fact the science of designing things (jobs, products, systems and environments) to allow people to work safely, efficiently and comfortably. To reduce this whole discipline to ‘that’ diagram demonstrating the ‘correct’ way to sit and stare at a computer screen doesn’t merely oversimplify the field but is incorrect. Most ergonomists will tell you that as dynamic beings designed to move, the best posture is, in fact, the next posture!

The truth is, those of us working within musculoskeletal pain can learn a great deal from Ergonomics, but it has nothing to do with posture or the correct way to lift a box. Far from studying one thing in detail, embarking on this MSc taught me about a range of topics, but more than that, it shifted my thinking and altered my career path. But more of that later.

The course initially appealed to me because there was a module entitled ‘Product Design’ and I thought that it might allow me to combine my knowledge of human anatomy and function with an ambition to do something a little more creative. On that front, I was to be disappointed. Even though the course was based in the Design school, and Ergonomics certainly underpins the design and development of many products, development of which demands robust research processes, a grasp of statistics is perhaps more valuable than creative flair.

But that’s not to say that my year at Loughborough was all data patterns and standard deviations. Before I get into the part of Ergonomics that I really fell in love with - the part that changed my thinking, and my career path as a physiotherapist - I would like to mention some of the great stuff that I did as part of my Masters year at Loughborough with the aim of giving some insight into such a varied and interesting speciality; one that is all around us, every day, without us often even knowing.

Environmental Ergonomics gave me the opportunity to work on some fascinating projects spending time testing different objects in the wind tunnels in the labs at the university, as well as travelling to Portsmouth to assess sound levels at a rehearsal of the Band of the Royal Marines. Temperature, airflow, noise levels: those are all ergonomic factors.