Morgan 1

Leanne is a sales rep for a medical company and spends a lot of time driving. She visits physicians and providers, and sometimes travels for a few hours to meet customers. She has never thought about how occupational therapy could benefit her job. Occupational therapists can collaborate with her company to promote her health and prevent injuries. Leanne experiences lower back and wrist pain from driving. Her company prioritizes ergonomics in the office but doesn't provide any information for driving. Occupational therapists can help Leanne with proper car seat positioning, avoiding prolonged positions and body vibration. Hi, I'm Morgan. I'm here with Leanne, and we're here to talk with her about her job, her health, and her everyday life in return with her job. So can you tell us about your job and just a general description of what it is and the requirements and tasks that you have to do? Sure. I am a sales rep for a medical company, and I spend a lot of time in my car. I visit physicians and other providers in the area and basically drive around throughout the day and get out, walk in, talk to customers, and come right back out, get in my car. But I could also spend a couple of hours traveling to a customer to visit as well. So do you have any idea of how occupational therapy can tie in with your job and with driving? I have always sort of thought about that and in how this could work because I know that there's ergonomics for sitting at your desk and how things could be improved. But I never really thought about how to do it in my car, and my company really doesn't provide that information to us. Yeah, so I think occupational therapists could potentially work with your company because the goal of occupational therapy is to promote your health, well-being, and participation in your everyday life. So oftentimes, OTs will collaborate with them to promote your overall health during your workday and prevent injuries so that you can live a fulfilled life. What kind of problems do you see in your everyday life as a result from driving all the time? Well, I have been driving for a long time, so I've been doing this job for quite a long time. But I do have a lot of lower back pain, and I also have recently had some wrist pain. So I do believe that it has a lot to do with me being in the car throughout the day and just doing the same things every day. Do you see that your company prioritizes anything at all, gives you tips, equipment, anything like that? I can honestly say as far as driving the car, no. But other things in the company, yes, they do the sitting at your desk the proper way, get up and move around, or lifting things. But as far as sitting in your car all day, I have never seen anything from my company, no. Yeah, so they definitely could work with an OT. There's different things that they could do. And just for your information now, you want to avoid awkward positions, prolonged positions, and then whole body vibration. So online, there's different ways that you can position your car seat for driving. There's a whole long list of that. And then you also want to avoid the prolonged positions. Just keep your body moving. That way, whenever you do eventually get up and moving, you don't get sore as a result from not being warmed up. And then also just minimizing the exposure to the body vibration. So making sure that your suspension and everything is well-maintained, keeping everything healthy so that your body is not vibrating.