A repetitive trauma injury, as opposed to a specific injury, occurs when there is repeated exposure to harmful activities in the work place. These might be any constant motions that you have to do for work each day every day. Examples are: data entry/key boarding, jobs that heavily rely on how many units or products you can crank out per hour, scanning/labeling/shipping, using certain tools that require squeezing/triggering.
In order to recover for an occupational disease of this type, an injured employee must prove that repetitious, physically traumatic activities occurred while on the job, and there is a casual connection between those activities and the harm or injury complained of. Proof of a repetitive trauma injury should consist of some presentation of the duration, frequency, and nature of the activated claimed to be traumatic.
To determine what your date of injury is, it’s the moment that a reasonably prudent person should have realized that the condition was work related. This isn’t when you first experienced symptoms! You may have had symptoms from a year ago but didn’t know they it was work related until you went to your doctor to discuss the reason for your symptoms. THAT doctor visit would be your date of injury, since that is when you realized that your condition was work related.
The date of injury is very important. If you didn’t report your injury within 30 days of knowing it was work related, your claim will quickly be denied. So its very important to know what your date of injury is. As soon as you find out that you have been injured on the job, give us a call for a free case evaluation over the phone.
