Briotix Health Story: Taking Care on the Road

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Briotix Health Industrial Sports Medicine Professional Emily Saleski. Emily has been with Briotix Health for five years and during that time was able to begin the introduction of a ride-along program, allowing providers the opportunity to get to know the workers they are helping a bit better. 

Preventing injuries in the workplace is important not only for employee health and well-being but also to morale and productivity. When workplace injuries increase, employee morale and productivity decrease. By getting providers involved directly in the workplace, they are able to more accurately assess the needs and priorities of care for the workforce. 

In this interview, Emily Saleski shares her background, her goals in becoming a provider, and how her ride-along program came to be. If you are interested in seeing the impact that Emily and workers like her have on a workplace, check out this case study.

Matthew (M): Hi Emily. Welcome to our little interview about your work with Briotix Health.
If you wouldn't mind, what is your name, position, and what work do you do for Briotix Health?

Emily (E): My name is Emily Saleski! I'm an Industrial Sports Medicine Professional with Briotix and I service several locations in the Phoenix Valley. In my role, I work on injury prevention and job coaching and just helping the employees stay safe and making sure their body is feeling good.

M: What led you to choose this line of work? Becoming a healthcare provider can be a big decision for many so what inspired you? 

E: I originally didn't think I would end up here, but I am loving it. My background is in athletic training, so I worked in collegiate athletics for five years.

After five years I had started to burn out, and I wanted to explore a new path and the thing that brought me here was just helping people.

I loved the human body and I love to spread the knowledge of what I know to help other people. Here, I am able to do that on a daily basis. I can build up that relationship every single day with advice that I give employees and they tell me they feel better from the things that I recommend. And so that's kind of what it's all about is helping people, that direct impact we can make. 

M: Of course. With your current client, you introduced a really exciting program, getting hands-on ergonomic experiences doing ride-alongs, is that right?

E: Yeah! So I did a truck ride along with one of the truck drivers out of a business center.
They package orders for businesses and kind of distribute them throughout the city on a daily basis. It's hard to get in touch with them because they leave the warehouse at 7:00 a.m. and come back at 3:00 p.m. to go home. I wanted to get more hands-on and see what their job was like.

The pain point with truck drivers is they are on their own and they have these large tasks to accomplish all by themselves within the workplace. I try to encourage people to team lift a lot, but that is not an option when you're driving a truck and you have all of these pallets to distribute on your own.

A lot of challenges that come into place are the many different layouts of businesses. You might not have a dock to pull up to, so you have to figure out how to get all of the items in your truck up some stairs or other environment. Or maybe you can't take a pallet into a building or a pallet jack into a building. So now you have to, you know, offload it, use a cart.

So there's a lot of solo lifting that I was working on addressing and identifying different behaviors that could be altered just a little bit. But then we have to consider that a lot of their shift they are sitting in the cabin. Addressing how to sit properly in a car or how to stretch your body, just so they aren't getting stiff between the physical labor that they're doing when they're dropping off orders.

So there was a lot to address and there's a lot of work that I can continue doing with that, but it was good to get my eyes on it and see how I can directly help that group of employees.

Innovations in safety can come from anywhere. A think-tank of seasoned professionals, a university study, or even, a new employee looking for a solution to an old problem. This September, the FMCSA began considering new revisions to their safety fitness determinations. As the goals of safety adapt and evolve over time it is vital for a company to have knowledgeable who have a full understanding of employees safety needs. 

M: Absolutely, finding those little points you can fix is really rewarding, especially when you can notice the things the workers may not even notice themselves and stop them from developing into a problem.

What really inspired you to start this program in the first place? 

E: I was new in January and I thought that this was something that just happened. I didn't know what I was doing was new, so I just said, "I would love to go on a truck ride along" and everyone at the location was happy to help so when I passed it by my supervisor and she paused for a second I was confused. She explained, "We haven't done this." 

So we worked together to get this all approved and working the appropriate way, making sure everything was good. I didn't know when I first brought it up that I was starting fresh.
But it has become more of an established thing.

We have quarterly calls with this client and within our company and we are seeing more industrial sports medicine professionals doing this at their locations. It's really kicking off and people are seeing the benefit of it everywhere.

M: What kind of benefits have you seen since the program itself has been implemented? Have you seen those changes in action with truck drivers?

E: We have seen those benefits out there, but, it is hard to get on the road with them and we're working on developing a program where I myself can drive to a drop-off location and meet the driver there and just do a one-off evaluation rather than hopping in a truck for four to 8 hours when we might not all have the ability or availability for that. 

I've seen some changes and we're working on more, but we're also using truck drivers to distribute the knowledge to other drivers, to their coworkers, saying, "Hey, I learned this from Emily and you guys should try it too because it's helped me." It's all about getting the buy-in so that once you're there, you can have an easier path to spread the news and get people on board.

It's all positive feedback and people are so grateful that they now have somebody here to look out for them. In the past, they haven't had those services. They haven't had somebody coming into their workplace, asking them how their body is feeling.

You know just coming in cold and being like you're lifting wrong can come off the wrong way and people can get defensive, they don't wanna be told they're wrong. I think the relationship you build is the biggest part of the job. When I went on these rides people were just able to buy in and and get the benefits out of what we're actually trying to do. I wanna improve the way you do it so that your body feels good, we're all here for the same reason. We all have the same goals.

It's really fantastic and management is loving the support because their number one goal is always safety. They want to keep their employees happy and healthy and having us all work as a team is great at accomplishing that goal and fostering goodwill for the program. 

Considering making your next big step in safety? Reach out to a Briotix Health Solutions Advisor to make sure your next steps are the best they can be.