Symptoms

The key to dealing with repetitive strain injury successfully is treating the symptoms and tackling the causes. This is the approach that I have taken both on this page and in my book (in the book I also address the legal and employment aspects of RSI, and how to obtain a diagnosis). If you have trouble with the keyboard and mouse remember that you can always print it out to look at later.

Firstly, what do you need to be aware of ? The symptoms of an injury could be one or more of the following:

• Pain, stiffness, swelling, numbness or tingling in the hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, back or neck.
• Discomfort which is brought on by carrying out a particular task, and then improves when no longer doing it; i.e. if the pain lessens or disappears over weekends, or during holidays.
• Discomfort starts in one area, for example neck and back, and then spreads to other parts of the body. Early warning signs may manifest as sore shoulders or neck pain, particularly when travelling home in the car after a day at work. Equally the effects may show up the morning after as aches and stiffness in the limbs and the hands.

If you believe that you may have a problem then you need to do the following straightaway:

Consult your doctor. Most doctors now accept that RSI is a genuine physical problem and do take it seriously. If your not satisfied with his or her response then see another doctor until you are satisfied.

Stop whatever activities are causing the pain. This is obviously something that is much easier to say than do, as often these activities form a major part of someone's working life. However, by trying to work through it, the problem will just get worse. RSI is very treatable in the early stages, but even a short delay in seeking rest and treatment can put back recovery by weeks, months or even years.

There are many work arounds that can be used to enable you to carry on working with the minimum of pain while you recover; look under the workplace section for some ideas of these.