New strategic plan

The Institute adopted a strategic plan laying out 5 research orientations nd reflecting its clear wish to provide workplaces with the tools essential to their reducing the number and severity of occupational injuries and to facilitating the rehabilitation of injured workers, particularly by preventing relapses and recurrences. The 15 research fields were as follows: injuries attributable to repetitive work, back problems, industrial noise, chemical and biological contaminants, machines and tools, vibration, protective equipment, the accident process, work organization, air quality, OHS indicators, rehabilitation, evaluation of prevention, safe maternity and sociological and technological changes.

Funding a clinical and ergonomic intervention program

D^r Patrick Loisel

The new back pain clinic at Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke was awarded major funding by the IRSST to implement a vast clinical and ergonomic intervention program. Twenty-two thousand workers associated with more than 30 companies in Québec’s Estrie region took part in the coordinated, multidisciplinary case-management project involving back pain sufferers. Physicians specializing in back problems, occupational medicine physicians, occupational therapists, psychologists, ergonomists, physiotherapists, rehabilitation therapists, kinesiologists and CSST rehabilitation counsellors all collaborated in the project. These practitioners and stakeholders advised the workers’ treating physicians.

For a safe maternity

At the CSST’s request, a working group was formed to study the issue of pregnant women in the workforce, particularly the scientific bases for the protective measures offered at that time to such women and their unborn children.