Ergonomic Chairs - The Dangers Inherent in Transfers With Back Pain

Ergonomic Chairs are designed to maintain your comfort when performing work based activities throughout the day. It means that people who have back problems are more likely to choose this type of chair, for easing their back discomforts.

As an Occupational Therapist, my expertise is safety and ergonomic chairs have a potential danger for transferring in and out of the chair.

The ergonomic chair uses casters for moving the chair around easily in their work environment, but the majority of chairs do not have any locking mechanism on the casters. If people have discomforts in their back, they will be limited in their ability to flex forward at the hips, for ease of standing up. Our body has a way of compensating for this by leaning back on the chair that provides a pivot action for getting up. This is automatic and NOT CORRECT!

The reason is that the chair has the potential to move back, while attempting to stand up; because the casters on the ergonomic chair are designed to roll. If the chair rolls backwards, then you are likely to fall on the floor; which will then make the transfer even more difficult for you to get up from the floor with back pain.

Now you face the embarrassment of requesting help to get up off the floor. I can overcome this problem in another article.

All ergonomic chairs SHOULD have a locking mechanism on the casters; so that you have the option to you use the brakes or not. It is better to have them installed, before you consider purchasing an ergonomic chair.

Locking casters act as a braking mechanism for preventing injuries to your skeletal joints, when performing daily living activities in an ergonomic chair.

This is important when you are limited in functional mobility, due to any skeletal discomforts such as back pain that limits your ability to move safely.

Ergonomic chairs are important for comfort, because they provide support to your skeletal joints in performing activities. There are dangers in performing any activities when you are limited in your ability to perform them normally.