A cross-sectional study on work-related musculoskeletal disorders and associated risk factors among hospital health cares

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) is common compliant of staff and workers in the different workplaces. There is a lake of data related to which position making a disorder and how hospital staffs respond to injury or of what postures making WMSDs. The objective of this research was to assess the severity and prevalence of WMSDs among hospital health care staffs, and determination of human factors risk factors. The subjects of the current study were health care staffs and nurses (n=110) in a public hospital. Ten body regions were evaluated in the workplaces for human factors assessment using Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ). Quick Exposure Check tool was used to evaluate the working postures to determine the WMSDs risk and action level for prevention. The results from NMQ and the evaluation of postures illustrated that, there was a significant relationship between occurrence of back pain and neck pain and workgroups (P value less than 0.005). No significant correlation was seen for other body regions between groups of subjects. The QEC tool assessment showed that there is a high risk for WMSDs among health care staffs who carrying or transferring/relocating the patients (L=4) and there is a medium action level for nurses who working in standing position for long time (L=3). A significant difference was observed for sex of subjects, it revealed that the female nurses are in higher risk compare to male nurses. Patients handling/transferring and relocating are a high risk task for subjects with regards to prevalence of WMSDs, especially for female nurses and health care staffs. Ergonomics design as prevention intervention is necessary for studied positions. Further study needed to determine effectiveness of ergonomics interventions after designing. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.