Dr. Scott MacKinnon

Dr. Scott MacKinnon holds the Research Chair in Workplace Health and Safety at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is part of SafetyNet, a community alliance for health research with major funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). SafetyNet's comprehensive research program studies occupational health and safety of marine and coastal work.

Dr. MacKinnon's role is to spearhead interdisciplinary research initiatives in the area of workplace health and safety. He said the current regulatory environment tries to set limits for workplace demands - for example, using protective equipment when noise exceeds certain limits. "The problem with that approach is that it can't be used for manual materials handling tasks because we are far from knowing what exposures cause injury," he said.

Dr. MacKinnon said that in reality, many workers can perform tasks without getting hurt even when they do not precisely follow guidelines. Thus researchers in occupational health and safety are slowly changing the way they understand the relationship between work practices and risk for injury and accident.

There are two types of injuries - acute and chronic. An acute injury, such as slipping on a puddle of water and wrenching your back, is generally related to poor housekeeping practices. But the more insidious injuries, the ones with the higher cost to the healthcare system, are chronic injuries that evolve over time. Chronic injuries are difficult to prevent, predict and regulate from a legislative perspective. Once people present with substantial demonstration of pain, for example from carpal tunnel syndrome, they may never be able to return to the job that they were doing.

Dr. MacKinnon said his job, in cooperation with other SafetyNet researchers, is to bring all the stakeholders together and look at issues related to workplace health and safety. "In a best practices model, everyone has to put their best foot forward. Employers must have the proper safety regulations in effect, but employees have to be educated enough to recognize risk and mediate that risk. That may mean refusing to do a certain task if they do not feel they can do it safely."

The direct cost of an injury or accident is pretty straightforward but indirect costs creep into the system. Indirect costs include replacing an injured worker, increased management time for that employee, lower productivity, and perhaps lower quality of production. Dr. MacKinnon said that for every dollar spent in direct cost for injuries there's at least $6 in indirect cost and this is detrimental to the economy.

Dr. MacKinnon is involved in planning an international conference, Research on Workplace Health and Safety: From the Core to the Margins, a joint venture hosted by SafetyNet and the Canadian Association for Research on Work and Health (CARWH) from June 7-10, 2006 at Memorial University. For more information on this conference, visit http://www.med.mun.ca/ohs2006/.

Dr. MacKinnon's background research gives him a good basis to approach his new interdisciplinary task. He has expertise in the analysis of human movement, including assessment of low back fatigue and pain; the development of operations guidelines for heavy materials handling activities and the cost-benefit analyses of ergonomic intervention programs. He has recently been investigating the influences of platform motion on injury, postural stability, motion sickness and fatigue on command and control in harsh maritime environments.

The Research Chair in Workplace Health and Safety is funded through an interdisciplinary capacity enhancement (ICE) grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and co-funded by Inco Ltd. The ICE grant is allowing SafeyNet to develop an East Coast Consortium on Workplace Health and Safety in collaboration with the Université de Sherbrooke and the IRSST (Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail) in Montreal, the research arm of the workers compensation board in Quebec. A chair has been established in Quebec on knowledge transfer and some of the results from the research there on quality control and injury prevention in the beef and chicken industries will be tested in fish plants in Newfoundland.

Dr. MacKinnon joined the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at Memorial University in January 2002. He earned his PhD from the University of Cape Town and also holds degrees from Dalhousie University and the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. Previous to joining the faculty at Memorial he taught at Dalhousie, Saint Mary's University, Mount Saint Vincent University and Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

For further information, please contact Dr. Scott MacKinnon using the Email contact form or by phone at 709 737- 8807 or 709 777-8746