Deepinder K. Dhaliwal, MD, on healthy ergonomics for a long career in ophthalmology

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Hi, everyone, I'm Femida Kherani.

And I'm Cynthia Matossian, and we have a wonderful guest with us today.

Hi, I'm Deep Dhaliwal.

And we're so pleased to be here at our Season two Our View Healio Blog with Dr. Dhaliwal.

And what we're discussing today is ergonomics because our overall topic is physician wellbeing, and clearly, ergonomics is a critical part of it. So Deep, I have a question for you. How did you become passionate in this subject?

Thanks for that question, Cynthia. I became passionate about ergonomics when it was too late. It was actually after I had a back injury where I herniated the disc between L5 S1 and was basically disabled. For two weeks of my career, I was not able to operate. I could not see patients. And then I had to take a kind of break and really reexamine what I was doing, how I was doing it, and thank God, with physical therapy, acupuncture, meditation, all these things, thank God, I was able to heal and go back to work full-time. But it was only when I was forced to think about it that I did think about it. But now I'm so happy that you're doing this program because we need to be proactive. We don't want to become disabled before we think about these things. Our goal right now is to help people live their best life, and practice a fulfilling career, and be healthy doing it.

Absolutely, and thank you so much for sharing that personal journey. And it is a hard one because ergonomics affects everything about our work. So, do you have any pearls that you would advise for the young physician to think about?

Absolutely, and this is young, old, everybody. We all need this. So, the first thing I would suggest is when you are doing a slit lamp exam, do not crane your neck forward, okay? Your ears should always be over your shoulders, shoulder over your hips so that you bring the patient to you. And have the patient, if they need to scoot forward in the chair, fine. But you maintain your posture. Do not crane your neck forward. That is key. The other thing that I will do, another pearl, is when you have the big indirect on your head, raise the patient's chair up so that you are not having your head go down. When you actually look down with a weight or even just with your own head, that effective weight that your neck is carrying is extremely high. So, you want to keep your neck straight as much as possible.

Absolutely, I had to change my whole life. So, in the OR, I have a specific chair that I use that helps me with back support. So it's an ergonomically designed chair. And there's many now on the market, so I researched all these chairs. And also in the microscope, when I am doing surgery now, I take time to make sure that I am not leaning forward, looking up. My neck, again, should be very neutral, and I should be looking, you know, a little bit down into the scope if possible. And I'm very particular about the total setup that I'm straight and very comfortable. After a day of surgery, you should feel great. You should not feel stretched or strained or anything. You should be loosey goosey. And in between cases, we do micro-breaks. So, after every case, we do stretches, and we open up our chest and shoulders. Shoulders back, and that's super important. And we do stretches. People think I'm a little bit funny or a little bit crazy but that's okay because my body feels so much better. And every morning, we're doing stretching and strengthening. And I think yoga, meditation is critically important.

It's so funny. I always joke about having a yoga break in the operating room.

You do?

I do.

So Femida, you're already living your best self.

We have to focus on not using our text posture, right? That neck actually is really important.

That's right, the text posture.

The text neck is very hurtful for the cervical spine.

Well, Deep, thank you so much for sharing these pearls on this program for physician wellbeing on Season two of Our View.

Thank you, guys, my dear friends. I'm so happy to be here with all of you. Thank you.