As the year draws to a close and we look ahead to a productive and successful 2022, we’re taking a moment to look back and celebrate the achievements of 2021.
To start, we had remarkable success continuing our workplace wellness and safety interventions without contributing to the spread of COVID. We recorded over 12,000 hours of service and almost 40,000 sessions without a single incident of COVID transmission from a provider to an employee.
We also launched a comprehensive new package of solutions to address safety and wellness concerns including pain, ergonomic discomfort, injury risk factors, and mental health concerns. The package, called Self-Care Plus, has already begun transforming workplace safety programs at major employers across the country.
Along the way, it’s been critical for us to capitalize on the rich insights of our colleagues across the safety industry. We’ve worked with dozens of experts in different safety and wellness fields to develop our innovative solutions, and their influence doesn’t stop there. In many cases, these experts have joined us to share their insights on our fast-growing podcast.
It’s been an especially big year for the DORN Injury Prevention Academy Podcast, where we meet with safety leaders and wellness innovators to talk about the most pressing and exciting topics in the world of workplace safety. Our audience has grown by thousands over the course of the year, and we’ve been lucky to connect with some of the most influential thought leaders in the EHS field.
If you’ve missed out on the DORN Injury Prevention Academy Podcast, it’s available on YouTube to watch on-demand. Keep reading for a review of our three top workplace safety podcast episodes from the past 12-18 months.
Episode 9: Safety Culture, featuring Kirsten Ross
This episode of the DORN Injury Prevention Academy features an interview with Kirsten Ross, North American leader of EHS at Tesla. Known for its groundbreaking technologies and futuristic innovations, Tesla is also a leader in safety practices for its huge and growing global workforce.
Here, we asked Kirstin to tell us about her road to becoming a safety leader at Tesla. She shared insight into how women can develop thriving, successful careers at the highest levels of the safety world. We also discussed her experiences with evolving the injury prevention practices at Tesla, where her interventions have helped to improve safety statistics and create a more positive, encouraging culture of safety that includes strong communication between management and employees.
Episode 18: Preventing the Ripple Effects of Chronic Pain, featuring Dr. Stephen Grinstead
Chronic pain is a persistent issue for many safety leaders, affecting huge swaths of the workforce—indeed, more people suffer from chronic pain of various types than cancer, heart disease, and diabetes combined. It’s also a significant budgetary drain on employers, costing some $635 billion annually. And as the age of the average worker continues to rise, chronic pain will become even more prevalent and costly. That’s why it’s essential for employers to tackle the factors that lead to chronic pain early and prevent the ripple effects that can contribute to acute injuries, low productivity and engagement, and mental health issues.
This episode of the DORN Injury Prevention Academy Podcast features Dr. Stephen Grinstead, medical expert and author of the new book Thank You Adversity for Another Test: A Mind Body Spirit Approach for Relieving Chronis Pain Suffering. Dr. Grinstead brings over two decades of expertise in treating and managing chronic pain, sharing his insights into how “normal” pain can become a major problem in peoples’ everyday lives, affecting both physical and mental health. Likewise, Dr. Grinstead comments on the role of safety professionals in curbing opiate painkiller usage by addressing the risk factors for chronic pain. Finally, we dig into the potential of technologies such as virtual reality and AI to help safety leaders manage pain among their workers.
Episode 24: Managing Fatigue, featuring Clinton Marquardt
For employers and safety managers hoping to establish a holistic program around safety and employee wellness, the issues of fatigue and quality sleep should be near the top on any list of priorities. Sleep is an essential aspect of wellness, and when people don’t get enough quality sleep, everything in their lives can suffer; fatigue affects quality of work and productivity, relationships, and mental health, among other issues.
Clinton Marquardt is one of Canada’s leading experts in fatigue science, who has forged a career in developing creative solutions to the problems of quality sleep and fatigue. With decades of experience working with government and various private sectors, Clinton’s knowledge of the causes, risk factors, symptoms, and long-term effects of fatigue is unparalleled. In this episode, Clinton helped us explore innovative fatigue management strategies for the workplace, the special effects of fatigue on shift workers, how at-home and remote employees experience fatigue and burnout, and the injury risks that come with poor sleep.
This is also the first episode of the DORN Injury Prevention Academy Podcast to feature our new host, Kathryn Gourley, who joined DORN Companies in early 2021 and is helping us craft holistic and effective injury prevention and fatigue management strategies for employers in all industries.
We at DORN would like to wish our clients, their employees, and our providers a happy holiday season and a strong start to the new year. Subscribe to the DORN Companies channel on YouTube and watch out for new developments from the Injury Prevention Academy Podcast!
