The Effect of Ergonomic Educational Intervention on Reducing Musculoskeletal Disorders among Nurses

Nurses are subjected to musculoskeletal disorders for the reason of working situations and pressures, which any neglect of them causes a poor quality of hospital services provided to the patients. So, the present study was conducted to develop and evaluate the intervention based on the educational and reduction of musculoskeletal disorders among nurses of Khansar Fatemieh Hospital.

This descriptive-analytical study was carried out on 74 nursing staffs of Fatemieh Hospital, Khansar, Iran, who were studied completely as the whole census. Inclusion criteria were nurses who were responsible for patient transmission, with more than one year of work experience and without a case history of musculoskeletal disorders. Exclusion criteria were surgery or accident while studying as well as disinclination to continue taking part in the study. Initially, the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders was investigated by Nordic Questionnaire and Occupational Risk Factors by Rapid Body Assessment Technique (REBA). Evaluation criteria for the impact of training consisted of training such as film, pamphlets, handouts, informing in telegram channels, etc. Ultimately, after three months of training courses, the workstation was re-assessed through the above methods, and the data were analyzed through SPSS software version 16, Chi-square statistical tests, McNemar and Wilcoxon tests; then the effectiveness of the educational intervention was identified.

The mean age and work experience of the participants were 5.27 (32.83)and 4/55 (7.83) year respectively. The results illustrated that the highest rate of prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders was pertinent to the waist (64.90%) and knee (62.20%), wrist (50/00%) in order. The results obtained from the REBA technique indicated that 89.20% of participants were above the range of risk average. After the intervention, statistical tests exhibited a significant reduction in scores and level of risk achieved by the REBA technique (p-value<0/05). Also, the results stated that there was a significant reduction in musculoskeletal pains in the areas of the neck, shoulder, and knee after the intervention (P-value<0.05). But no perceptible change could be observed in the other kinesthetic organs of the body (P-value>0.05).  No significant relationship could be seen between gender, work experience, BMI (Body Mass Index) and prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (P-value>0.05) in this study, but the statistical tests indicated that there was a significant relationship between age and pain in wrist area (P-value<0.05).

The results offer that if preventative ergonomic training is part of multidisciplinary interventions and is presented through training such as film, pamphlets, pamphlets, handouts, informing in telegram channels and etc., it may have more influence on the reduction of musculoskeletal disorders.