During the months of May through July 2020, The Climber's Clinic asked route setters to complete a web-based survey regarding work and injury profile. It was both accessible in French and in English. The link to the survey was posted on many route setting and climbing facebook groups and most Canadian indoor gyms were reached via their facebook page or by e-mail. The english version is still accessible here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf-1dz3rsy_PEwoETU0uGugb24oJdwxESYtc4dmxZx8ptC2aQ/viewform?usp=sf_link
We will keep updating the numbers from this blog entry should there be more survey entries.
162 setters answered questions about their work (duration of a setting day, frequency per week, number of breaks, % of forerunning vs other tasks, experience in years) as well as work acccidents and chronic injuries (body area injured, nature of the injury). Since this survey has descriptive and exploratory purposes, we did not calculate correlations or used inferential statistics methods. Microsoft Excel was used for descritive statistics calculations and graphs.
We obtained 81 responses from Canada, spread out between 6 provinces, 47 responses from the United States of America spread out between 17 states. We finally had 27 international responses, as seen on the map below. (We were unable to localize the remaining data, since it was left blank).
78,6% of responders were males, 18,9% were females ( 2,5% prefered not to say). With regards to age group, the mean age was 29 years old, with the median of the distribution being 27,5 years old. As seen in the graph below, the majority of setters were between 22 and 33 years old.
As for the number of years of experience as a setters, the participants had in average 4 years of experience, with the median being 3.5 years. Those numbers might be underestimating the real data, since the last category (9+ years, which constitute 17,1% of setters) was an opened category.
In average, route setters are employed in average 2.5 days per week, with the median being 2 days per week. They work for 7,3 hours per day in average (median 8h). The full distributions can be seen below.
In addition, route setters were asked what percentage of their day is devoted to forerunning as opposed to other route setting tasks. In average, they responded that they spent 38% ot their time forerunning (with a median of 40%). As seen below, only 11,4% of setters spend more time forerunning compared to doing other route setting tasks.
With regards to the number of breaks during a regular working day, it varied between 0 and 3, with the mean being 1.3 breaks per day and the median being 1 break per day. Concerning the duration of those breaks, it was in average 36 minutes with the median being 30 minutes.
Next, reoute setters were questionned about work-relateds injuies. 78,5% of route setters reported they had sustained an injury at work, while 18,9% did not. The remaining
were not sure if it was a result of work.
Concerning the outcome of their injuries : 31% of setters had to take time off work as a result of a work injury, while 37% had to adapt or modify the way they work and their tasks because of their injury.
The survey highlighted different types of injuries : accidental and chronic. 61% of route setters have sustained a accidental injury (defined as a sudden event resulting in an injury to the worker.)
The graph below details which body areas where hurt during accidental injuries.
Here were the main causes of the accidental injuries in route setters as reported in the
survey:
• Dropped tool or hold hitting body part resulting in cuts, bruises.
• Metal, wood, dust or other debris in the eyes.
• Body part banged against a hold or wall resulting in contusions and ecchymosis
• Fall from a ladder causing ankle sprain, dislocation or fracture, neck whiplash
or concussion.
• Penetrating object (drill bit, screw) puncturing fingers or feet.
• Heavy or improper lifting and long period in the harness causing low back strain.
• Strenuous moves while forerunning causing ligament and joint capsular sprains
to fingers, wrists, shoulders, knees and lower back.
The second type of injury aloso known as "work-related occupational disorders", are chronic or overuse conditions that develop gradually as a consequence of stressful work tasks repeated over time. The distribution below shows which body areas were mostly afffected from chronic conditions due to route setting.
Concerning the nature of the condition, here is what route setters reported:
- Shoulder: bursitis, capsulitis, tendonitis, tendinopathy
- Elbow: epicondilitis, epicondalgia
- Wrist : instability, de Quervain tenosynovitis
- Finger: pulley injury, finger flexors tenosynovitis
- Neck: strain, cervicalgia
- Lower Back: strain, lombalgia
- Nerve Impingement syndrome: carpal tunnel syndrome, thoracic outlet syndrome
Lastly, when asked what could have helped prevent their injuries, here is what route setters responded:
Appropriate tools are described as protective eyewear, hand tools, ladder, carts or lifts. Other preventative measures were described as better and more specific warm-up, more time to set (with a very short setting time, setters felt rushed in their tasks), less frequency of setting per week, the implementation of a security protocol and a better training periodization between climbing, training and setting.
To sum, the results of the survey first showed that a vast majority (78,5%) of route setters get injured at work. The first component of prevention measures would be to look at safety and security practices. Each center should respect health and safety legislations effective in their country and have an inhouse protocol to help reduce accidental injuries.
Second, looking at risk factors for work-related musculosqueletal disorders is more complex, but seems mandatory since almost 3 out of 4 route setters suffers from such chronic conditions. Data from other manual labour professions and climbing should be looked at to implement prevention measures.
Of course, this exploratory survey leaves many more questions. It is not known at the moment if there is a correlation between risk of accidental injuries and distribution of tasks (forerunning vs routesetting). It is also not known if there is a correlation between overuse injuries and the frequency of route setting in a week, duration of working days or number of breaks. Also does years of experience influence the risk of accidental and chronic injuries? Something else to explore would be the number of climbing sessions outside of working days and the impact on the risk of injuries.
Please let us know yours thoughts on the results of this survey!
Evelyne Lajoie, MSc PT for The Climber's Clinic/La Clinique des grimpeurs.
Oct 2020.
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