Be a champion! GRCC is helping students and employees focus on all areas of health and wellness as we emerge together from the pandemic

Wellness is a full integration of physical, mental and spiritual health. That includes physical health, but so much more. During the next year we’re also looking at emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental and occupational health, and how we all can work to help ourselves and each other.

There are many resources at GRCC to help all of these types of wellness. Each week, we’ll introduce you to people and places here on campus ready to support you on your wellness journey.

Lyn Jansen, an instructor in GRCC’s Occupational Therapy Assistant program, is an expert in ergonomics. She reminds us that work shouldn’t hurt.

If you work at a computer station and by the end of the day your eyes are strained and your wrists ache and back is a little sore, how you sit and how your computer’s monitor is set up might be a factor.

Workplace wellness tips include sitting up straight with your back against your chair, with your feet on the floor. Monitors should be an arm’s length away.

It’s also for people in office jobs to stretch throughout the day, holding poses for five to 20 seconds to help their back, neck, shoulders and arms.

OTA students recently partnered with GRCC’s Media Technologies Department members to provide ergonomic recommendations for improving employee safety and comfort.

Students observed team members while doing their jobs such as videotaping, editing videos, and loading, unloading, maintaining and repairing videography-related equipment. The OTA students worked in teams to focus on specific areas such as computer use, upper body positioning, lower body positioning, and vision concerns.

One group of students was devoted to providing reasons that attention to ergonomics is important and another team focused solely on instruction in preventative stretches.

Lyn has taught in GRCC’s OTA program for 20 years, and has clinical experience in evaluation and treatment in acute and sub-acute rehabilitation, work hardening, functional capacity evaluation, upper extremity injury, job analysis and injury prevention, transitional living for traumatic brain injury and home health and student supervision.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in Occupational Therapy from Western Michigan University and a master’s degree in Adult Education from the University of Indiana. She’s certified by the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy.