When you figure this out please let us know! I once was involved with a similar project and we hired a consulting ergonomist to help. For 90% of the job titles, the ergonomist did a good job and Occ Health and Safety just reviewed them. Nurses and doctors – much more complex.

The problem we had with nursing is that the institution used the same job codes for all RNs for professional advancement ladder purposes. It got way too complex to try and recreate all the different RN levels for different settings. Yet the RNs working in the NICU or Newborn Nursery clearly had different physical demands from those in the adult bariatric surgery unit or the trauma ICU. We ended up just using the most demanding requirements, and in the interview process if someone needed an accommodation it would be evaluated individually based on the actual position they were starting.

Interested to hear if anyone else on the list has found a good approach for nursing jobs!

Thanks,

Melanie

From: MCOH-EH <mcoh-eh-bounces@mylist.net> On Behalf Of David S. Cockrum via MCOH-EH
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2025 8:03 AM
To: MCOH-EH <mcoh-eh@mylist.net>
Cc: David S. Cockrum <David.S.Cockrum@hitchcock.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [MCOH-EH] Physical Demands Requirements for HCWs

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Good morning!

As Dartmouth Health works to “harmonize” various administrative aspects across the system, in which 7 different inpatient facilities are now under a single HR system (and working on a single Employee Health function – ongoing battle!), one of the challenging areas is Job Descriptions. Our Employee Health team, along with the Environmental Health and Safety team, has been tasked with trying to bring some commonality to the Physical Demands (PD) portion of the JDs.

I was wondering if any our experts could point me to a good reference for PDs for various healthcare jobs? I have the broad definitions from DoL/SSA (sedentary, light, medium, heavy, very heavy), we’re trying to figure out how we can apply these across the system for various job categories. For example, is an ICU RN at the academic center the same as an ambulatory RN at a smaller clinic facility? I really don’t think that’s the case, but where is the line drawn for RNs (as just one example)?What references exist that can help us understand how to differentiate these kinds of variations?

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated!

David

David S. Cockrum, MD, MPH
He/Him/His

Medical Director & Section Chief

Occupational & Environmental Medicine
Department of Medicine

Tel (603) 653-3881 | Fax (603) 650-0930
Dartmouth-Health.org

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

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