Ergonomics: an imperative need for surgeons

Abstract

From the beginnings of surgery, it was the nurses,
kinesiologists, and the surgeons themselves whom indicated the patients about the best positions and movements that they could and should perform after a surgery. Generally, the objectives consists on mobilizing and strengthening joints and muscles, with the goal of
preventing circulatory and respiratory complications, lessening the pain, and correcting the body’s position, as well as the habituation and correct use of drainages, implants or stomas for example.(1)
It was Hippocrates who, with the theory of the four humors of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, started to consider physical injuries and diseases as natural events that can be treated, and not as irreparable divine punishments. (2) And it was on that very same ancient Greece that philosophers
such as Hippocrates and Aristotle already spoke of the importance of adapting the work environment of the people (similar to nowadays ergonomics).(2)