What is a Health Status Report

Because so little is truly understood about the mechanisms of RSI, one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself is to be aware of your health status and relate it to how you are working. By doing this, you can detect worsening or improving situations, and possibly even identify likely causes.

Whenever you feel something "has changed" it is appropriate to file another Health Status Report (potentially up to once per day or as little as twice a year). For example, if you feel more pain one day, file a report. If you have just returned from a hand therapy appointment, file a report. If it just seems like it's been a while since you've filed a report, file one.

In addition, if you'd like to insure tracking of information on a regular basis, you can schedule reports to occur periodically.

Filing a Report

When you file a report, you will see a dialog like this:

Answer the questions as best you can. You can add extra information about your symptoms in the "Additional symptom information" box and you can also add other general comments.

If you use RSIGuard because your organization has a site-license, your organization may have configured RSIGuard to also submit copies of Health Status Reports to their ergonomics coordinator. If you prefer not to submit the DataLogger statistics, you can check the "Exclude DataLogger Statistics from Report" and the data will not be submitted. The data will also not be stored locally in your own copy.

Scheduling periodic Reports

If you want to schedule periodic Health Status Reports, click on Tools, then "Health Status Reports", then "Schedule Regular Status Reports". You will see a dialog that looks like this:

You can select either to schedule reports periodically (e.g., every 20 days, 30 days, etc.) or on a particular day of the week (e.g., Monday, Tuesday, etc.). If you no longer wish to have scheduled status reports, select "Don't automatically ask me to submit reports." You can also submit DataLogger Status Reports. These reports contain all of the DataLogger statistics, but no survey information is included (thus they are sent automatically in the background without interacting with you).

When your scheduled Health Status Report is due, RSIGuard will prompt you with a window like this:

Click "I'm ready to begin" to start filling out your Health Status Report.

Setting your email address

If your organization requests that you periodically submit status reports, then it is useful for those reports to include your email address.

Why? Based on the information gathered, your organization can determine trends, find groups of people who would benefit from additional training, equipment, or information. For this reason, based on the information submitted, management may wish to contact you. Including your email address makes this simple.

If RSIGuard prompts you with this window, please enter your email address. If you do not have a work email address, you can enter a personal email address.

If the OK button is greyed out, it means that you have not entered a valid email address.