Project 173923

The experience of illness is individual, and depends in part on contextual factors such as financial circumstances and a supportive work environment. Researchers do not yet fully understand how these factors influence health. The differences between groups of people whose occupations require highly skilled participation, including musicians and athletes, can help us understand how contextual factors affect the health of all people. At any time, about 40% of professional musicians have injuries related to playing an instrument, mostly affecting arms and backs. These injuries are poorly defined in research and large-scale data has not been collected in North America since 1986. For comparison, tennis players have about the same number of injuries but they experience different contexts. Professional athletes tend to have high salaries; most professional orchestra members make between $20,000 and $30,000/year. Athletes have access to sports injuries clinics and team doctors, while many professional musicians don't even have extended health insurance. An injury might mean a musician can't work, and the resulting personal financial hardship can translate to an additional tax burden for Canadians. There are over 47,000 professional union musicians in Canada, and many more non-union or amateur musicians who might be affected by these injuries. The cost to taxpayers for our public healthcare system to treat these injuries is substantial. The aim of this study is to determine how healthy professional musicians and athletes differ from each other and from other people in terms of their performance on tests of movement and sensation. These results will be used to design a survey to be administered to a large group of professional musicians in Canada and the US to update and improve our understanding of what health problems musicians experience, and how many are affected. This will help in developing better services that recognize the individual nature of health and illness.