Do Personal Factors or Types of Physical Tasks Predict Workplace Injury?

Abstract

Occupational health research has shown that certain worker and job characteristics are risk factors for workplace injuries. Workers who engage in physically demanding jobs, especially those jobs that involve repetitive motion, are at greater risk for work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD). These risks are particularly prevalent in the health care sector. It is often reported that nurses are at higher risk of workplace musculoskeletal injury than other health care workers due to frequent lifting and transfer of patients and the prevalence of workplace violence. However, many analyses of the physical requirements of jobs do not consider the modifying effect of time spent on a physical task and the risk of WMSD. This study compared the risks of WMSD among workers in health care facilities based on the type of physical tasks and amount of time workers spent on such tasks. Workers who worked longer on a physical task reported more WMSD than those who spent less time on the same physical task. The risk of WMSD was twice as high (odds ratio [OR] = 2.3) among workers who sit less than 2 hours each day compared with those who sit longer. This study found that physical tasks associated with health care jobs and the amount of time spent on these tasks constitutes serious risk factors for WMSD.

Who is More Injury‐Prone? Prediction and Assessment of Injury Risk

“…The prediction accuracy of any such model is highly specific for population characteristics (e.g., gender, age group, activity) and context (e.g., environment, task). Significant differences in physical demands and worker characteristics among occupational settings could be responsible for the contradictory findings of studies conducted to identify risk factors for work‐related musculoskeletal injury (Oranye et al., ). The purpose of this study is simply to demonstrate an alternative approach to the majority of human movement research that has reported averaged values for groups (Hug & Tucker, ).…”

“…There are similarities in certain types of injuries sustained by athletes and workforce population. For example, joint ligament sprains and muscle-tendon strains represent the most common injuries sustained by competitive athletes (Hootman, Dick, & Agel, 2007;Darrow, Collins, Yard, & Comstock, 2009), as well as workers whose jobs impose a high level of physical demand (Baragaba et al, 2016;Oranye et al, 2016). Both athletes and workers often sustain lower back injuries, which can result in persisting impairment of neuromuscular control mechanisms that increase susceptibility to both upper extremity and lower extremity musculoskeletal injuries (Nadler, Malanga, DePrince, Stitik, & Feinberg, 2000;Massé-Alarie, Beaulieu, Preuss, & Schneider, 2015).…”

“…Since occupational injuries are often underreported, it is difficult to develop an accurate profile of an individual's injury risk within an organization due to the underperformance of predictive models as well as the differential between actual and reported injuries. Much like athletes, workers with physically demanding activities are highly susceptible to injury and potentially long‐term disability (Baragaba, Alghnam, & Bernacki, ; Oranye, Wallis, Roer, Archer‐Heese, & Aguilar, ). We, therefore, use the context of sport which has been found to be very similar to occupational settings in terms of the nature and severity of injuries that occur in both realms.…”

Distúrbios osteomusculares relacionados ao trabalho: uma caracterização da sintomatologia e dos exames diagnósticos

“…Além disso, esses sintomas são resultantes de vários fatores que podem predispor os trabalhadores às lesões musculoesqueléticas, incluindo políticas e práticas organizacionais, fatores predisponentes presentes no ambiente de trabalho, das características do trabalhador e do grupo ocupacional a que pertence (Orange et al, 2016).…”

“…Assim, os fatores mencionados, os fatores biomecânicos e os psicossociais são os principais agentes motivadores (Orange et al, 2016;Alireza et al, 2020). Logo, são considerados os grandes preditores do surgimento de quadros álgicos nos DORT a movimentação manual, o trabalho repetitivo e o estático, as vibrações e as condições psicológicas e as sociais precárias entre trabalhadores expostos (Ministério da Saúde, 2019).…”