Effect of Ergonomic Principles Education on Temporary Musculoskeletal Disorders of Personnel in Hospital Service

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are highly prevalent in personnel of hospital service. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of ergonomic principles education on temporary musculoskeletal disorders of personnel in hospital service. This study is a two-group pre-test, post-test experimental study that was done on 50 people of service staff of educational hospitals of Gonabad, Iran, in 2014. Participants were entered by simple randomized sampling method and then randomly assigned into two intervention and control groups (25 samples in per group). Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaires (NMQ) and Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) questionnaires were completed for both groups. Then ergonomic education was conducted for intervention group and after one month the questionnaires were completed. Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon tests were used. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS 16 software.
Findings: According to REBA, there was a statistically significant difference after intervention (p≤0.001) in two groups. Also, Nordic questionnaire showed a significant difference in upper back (p≤0.003), lower back (p≤0.022), and thigh (p≤0.016) scores after intervention. Ergonomic education can reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders of personnel in hospital service.