A pilot study of biomechanical and ergonomic analyses of risky manual tasks in physical therapy

The objective of this pilot study was to identify risk factors in physical therapy by performing quantitative ergonomic postural and biomechanical analyses of representative manual tasks. A total of 23 physical therapy students were recruited to perform six patient handling and joint mobilization tasks. Movement data were collected by a motion capture system. Biomechanical and ergonomic analyses were performed, including estimate of lumbar spine compression force, Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) and Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA). It was found that the low back compression forces of different transfer tasks were greater than the safety threshold. The ergonomic analysis showed that the three transfer tasks had high risk and the mobilization tasks had low to medium risk. Changes should be implemented to modify these body postures.