Arizona RSI Alarm!

By Karl Barksdale and Carl Fielder

An arming trend was reflected among the audience in a recent session in Arizona.

In a  July, 1999 Speaking Solutions training session, the audience was asked by a show of hands, how many of the teachers were experiencing pain in their hands, arms, shoulders or necks due to keyboarding and mouse use. 

About 11-12 hands went up.

In a room roughly split between the genders, nearly everyone raising their hand was a women. Since there were ~45 people in the room, this reflects the national trend of 1 in 4 keyboarders suffering symptoms. Also, nationally, women suffer RSI and carpal symptoms 3 to 1 over men. Keyboard and mouse related carpal tunnel and RSI really are gender biased physical and nerve disorders. Karl warned that women over 30 must be especially careful to reduce their number of keystrokes every day by at least 50%.

A few months later, Carl Fielder, reported the following:

"I am working with one of our receptionists at the Information Help Desk. Her Carpal Tunnel Syndrome has escalated drastically this last year and either she is going to have to change her method of working, or she is going to have to have an operation, or lastly she will quit work.

"Denise is just 31 and already having to switch to her left hand when using the mouse.

"I started training her in voice-typing this week and plan to have her working with the speech recognition program she needs [Voice Xpress] after the New Year.  The people are all a glow about what is about to happen -- and I see people in Information Systems coming up and just watching her speech recognition training."

From everyone at Speaking Solutions, we wish Denise all the success in the world with her new speech tools!  We hope the New Year will bring an end to your RSI and Carpal symptoms.