ABSTRACT
When considering their preventive activities, the OH practitioners are facing one particular challenge: in occupational health they must avoid implicitly using the biomedical model of health where disease is seen as the direct result of a pathogenic agent. Health must be viewed, instead, as a dynamic equilibrium between man and the environment. In this perspective, the prevention of WRMSDs should fundamentally be based on a conceptual model that integrates, in a balanced way, the influences of physical factors (force, compression, repetition, posture) and those of psychosocial factors such as lack of control, perceived stress, time pressure, (Hagberg et al. 1995; Inserm 1995). In this respect, the ergonomic approach offers an appropriate frame of reference, provided the user sticks to its true definition as a discipline which integrates knowledge drawn from the human sciences — and not only from work physiology or biomechanics — in order to match the task and the work environment to the abilities of people at work.
