Abha Amin, MD, on posture in the OR: Stand tall and let your body heal

Editor's note: This is an automatically generated transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of season two of Our View, our Healio vlog focusing on wellness and ergonomics. Today we have Dr. Abha Amin joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Great, can you share a little bit about your practice and where you're located?

I work at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, about 45 minutes north of New York City. And I manage complex anterior segment surgery for the hospital and for the surrounding areas. I perform all kinds of anterior chamber acrobatics for the local community and the needs. So that's my practice in a nutshell.
And how did you get passionate about ergonomics?

I was forced into being passionate about ergonomics by my own body telling me that something was wrong. 10 years ago, I started having a lot of pain in my neck and upper back. I found myself taking muscle relaxers to relax the muscle or just so I could work and taking massage and just working through the pain, and I was suffering. And so, didn't realize what was wrong until many years later. And once I discovered that it was my job-related stress or operating position or posture and even slit lamp exams and posture, once I internalized that that was the reason, everything changed for me. And what I started to do was I started studying the muscles, the relaxation of those muscles, proper posture, etc. And I do try my best to practice that. Of course, there's always times when things are stressful in the operating room and you forget and then you suddenly remember and say, no, relax, put your shoulders back, sit up straight and continue. And so that is how my journey in ergonomics started. And it's been wonderful because I am much more symptom-free than I ever was.

That's so interesting that you say that, because as someone who's about 12 years out, I was literally just thinking to myself about how I've got this pain right here. And am I going to go sit in my massage chair for 10 minutes today before I have clinic tomorrow? So, thank you for having some knowledge to share with us about this today. So, if you could give us like three pearls that I could use for tomorrow or for the next 25 years of my career, what are those three things that you could give me?

So, I have a nice tip for you. If you spend a lot of time in the office looking through a slit lamp, one of the biggest things we don't realize maybe when we're being trained is how to sit for the slit lamp. And what you're doing is you're extending your neck and you're posturing your back, and you're ending up with a C back and a curved neck this way. And the slit lamp is forcing you to do it. And what I have in my office now is a slit lamp adapter, which is a forced 20 degrees angle, and it forces you to sit higher and look down. And what it does is it forces your neck to be not extended and it makes your back straight. You're sitting about four or five inches taller in your chair, but it forces you to be straight and it makes your neck straight. It's a learning curve, but if you use that all day, you will avoid a lot of the posture issues all day long. So that's one tip. The second tip in the OR, sit at 90 degrees, use those oculars, they're your friends, tip them and even tilt the microscope toward you. And surgery can be stressful. And so, you're going to tense up, just every once in a while when nothing bad is happening, relax, put your shoulders back, remember where you are, and remember you have like five more hours of this. And so that's the second tip. And the third tip is either get a massage, work out, or undo some of this damage on a regular basis. Because your body needs to heal before you go back in.

Those were some wonderful pearls. Thank you so much for sharing them with us, Abha. And my last question to you is, are you doing any research in this area? You mentioned you had done some, and that's how you figured out what was going on. Are you doing any research going forward?

We actually do have a project. The plan is to teach residents early how to sit at the slit lamp and how to have proper posture so they don't end up in this situation. If they learn it right the first time around, hopefully they will avoid this pain in the neck and the pain in the back. And what we did was we studied their natural posture, and we photographed them, and then we did the educational training videos, and then we remeasured them to see if there was some learning and some improvement. And three months later, we're going to test them again to see if they remember the posture training and if they need reinforcements. So that's just one of the projects that we're doing. Another project we're doing is actually studying my posture at the slit lamp as a seasoned ophthalmologist, and we actually have a computer-generated motion device that actually measures my posture. And we are comparing that angled adapter with the normal slit lamp adapter. And that's in progress.

Well, those are really wonderful sounding research projects. Please keep us up to date and let us know what you find out, because this could be very helpful to the young starting ophthalmologist, like you mentioned, residents, as well as, you know, seasoned ophthalmologists who've been in that chair, bent over that slit lamp or the OR microscope for decades. Thank you, Abha, so much for your important advice to all of us.

You're very welcome.

Yeah, thank you, Abha. You're making us all stand taller. Or sit taller!

For sure. Thank you, have a good night.