تیمور اللهیاری

Nowadays, due to the increase in the volume of accidents, pre-hospital emergency personnel, as the frontline of treatment by providing relief and assistance to patients and victims of various incidents, have encountered various work-related challenges and problems, including cardiovascular diseases, digestive diseases, excessive fatigue, and reduced sleep quality. In this regard, the present research aimed to study the relationship among shift work, sleep quality, and work ability index in pre-hospital emergency personnel.

This research was performed on 102 operational personnel of a pre-hospital emergency department in Urmia, Iran. After the collection of demographic information, the number of work shifts per week, the number of working hours per month, the quality of sleep, and the work ability of the personnel were measured by the Petersburg sleep quality questionnaire and work ability index questionnaire. The relationship between research variables was investigated using correlation coefficient, Fisher's exact test, and one-way analysis of variance tests.

Mean total sleep quality score of the personnel was 6.01 ± 2.38, which indicated poor and unfavorable sleep quality. Moreover, work ability index scores of 34.3%, 52%, and 13.7% of participants were at poor, moderate, good, and excellent levels, respectively. Regarding the comparison between the two variables of shift work and sleep quality, there was a significant difference, and a strong and significant relationship was observed between sleep quality and work ability index.

Through the increase in the number of work shifts and working hours, the sleep quality of the personnel became unfavorable and weak which led to a decrease in the work ability index score and a reduction in the job performance of the personnel. Reduction of working hours, usage of young people with high work ability, management and control of the number of work shifts of the personnel by considering resting and closure time, consideration of morning-evening and night shifts in a balanced and equal manner, and prevention of people from working in monotonous shifts (activity only in the form of night work or only day work), and avoidance of working in consecutive work shifts without rest and vacation in order to improve the quality of sleep and work performance is recommended.

Job  stress is a growing problem worldwide that affects not only the health and well-being of employees but also the productivity of organizations. Ergonomics  climate  shows employees' understanding of the organization's support and emphasis on job design and modification in order to improve "operational performance" and "employee well-being". The present study aims to provide a model to explain  Job  stress with a focuson ergonomics climate was made using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system approach.

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive and correlational in terms of data collection method. The statistical population of the current research is the healthcare staff of one of the hospitals in Urmia city. model through  evaluation criteria RMSE[1], MAE[2] and  R2[3] were validated.

The correlation coefficient between ergonomic climate and job stress for 376  data is - 0.629. which indicates an inverse relationship. The obtained results indicate the high validity of the model of Adaptive  Neuro-Fuzzy - Inference  System (RMSE=0.02) for evaluating and predicting  Job stress centered on ergonomics climate.

Ergonomics climate  and its dimensions including operational performance and employee well-being have an inverse relationship with  job  stress of employees. The presented model can predict with high reliability the level of  job  stress of employees using ergonomics climate.

Strategic planning aligns organizations’ resources to achieve their mission and long-term objectives and goals. At the moment, a comprehensive strategic plan in the field of Ergonomics is one of the academic and industrial priorities in Iran to achieve a superior scientific position and ultimately meet the real needs of society. Therefore, this study was conducted to develop a strategic plan for Ergonomics from 2021 to 2025.

This study was conducted using a participatory action research strategy in 2021. In this regard, the strategic planning committee consisting of 18 professors, specialists, and Ph.D. students in the Ergonomics and occupational health engineering fields was formed. The committee evaluated the internal and external environment of the Ergonomics using a strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) matrix and a researcher-developed checklist through several regular weekly sessions. Then, general and specific goals, and possible measures to achieve the goals were identified.

According to SWOT analysis, Ergonomics major is in the “hold and maintain” position which consisted of organizational architecture, quality management, market management, and cost management. In the proposed action plan, a total of 57 specific goals in six areas were extracted including education, research, specialized services in ergonomics, improving faculty member/employees/students’ satisfaction, and improving community satisfaction with ergonomic services. To achieve these goals, 124 related actions were also predicted.

Achieving Ergonomics major perspective will be possible by using the goals identified in this study, the proper implementation of the predicted objective-specific measures, planning to reach the maximum use of the opportunities, and minimizing challenges due to the major weaknesses.

Staff responsible for transporting patients to the hospital are at risk for musculoskeletal disorders. Therefore, this study was performed using the MAPO method and 3DSSPP software to estimate the mechanical load on the waist of staff carrying the patient.

In the first stage, the hospital wards and the number of personnel who transferred patients manually were identified and evaluated with the MAPO index. 3DSSPP software was used to identify and evaluate the risk factors causing back injuries in personnel. The results were analyzed using SPSS (version 26) and descriptive statistics, Chi-square, and correlation tests.

Participants consisted of 24 people, including 21 men and 3 women, with a mean age of 35.6 years. According to the results of 3DSSPP software, in 37.5% of people, the estimated ligament damage was more than the allowable limit. The compressive force on the L4/L5 and L5/S1 vertebral discs was higher than the allowable limit in 58.3% and 62.5% of subjects, respectively. Based on Pearson's statistical test, there was a significant correlation between the results of MAPO and 3DSSPP methods.

To reduce and minimize the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders, it is necessary to eliminate the factors affecting the patient's mobility, such as assistive devices and equipment, environmental factors, improved education, and the factors affecting the disorders. The MAPO method was an effective way to plan preventive measures to reduce the risk of disorders, and 3DSSPP software was also a good tool for examining the forces acting on the waist.

Car seats have a significant impact on driver comfort and reduction of postural load on the low back of the driver. The purpose of this study was to compare three common types of car seat in Iran on the driver's fatigue and muscle discomfort.
Ten participants completed 2 hours of simulated driving for each of the three type of car seat in different days within a week. During driving task, the electrical activity of the lumbar erector spinae muscles were recorded every 15 minutes and discomfort rate measured every 30 minutes by a visual indicator. The RMS, mean frequency (MNF) and median frequency (MDF) were calculated and used to assess muscle load and fatigue. Repeated measure ANOVA was performed to assess the effect of car Seat on muscular activity and fatigue.
A significant difference found between various types of car seat with regards to subjective measure of discomfort data (p Although the level of activity and fatigue of erector spinae muscles showed no significant difference during two hours of driving, but self reported discomfort in low back muscles suggested a significant difference. Based on the findings of this study, it seems some type of car seats may cause discomfort however there was no significant difference between three types of car seat with regard to fatigue. In order to design of ergonomic car seat further studies recommended.

Recent challenges related to patient safety and medical errors in healthcare, has led to a focus on increasing quality across healthcare organizations. Psychosocial work factors and fatigue have been identified as significant factors related to nurses’ performance. The relationship between psychosocial work factors and fatigue has been rarely studied. The aim of this study was investigating the relationship between psychosocial work factors and fatigue among nurses.
Material and In this cross-sectional study, 270 randomly nurses from university hospitals participated. The Persian version of Job Content Questionnaire (P-JCQ) and Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory have used the tools for data collection. The correlation coefficient was employed to examine the relationship between job stressors scales and fatigue. Structural equation modeling was applied to fit the model
The mean (SD) of decision latitude 66.32 (7.36), psychological job demand 35.47 (3.68), social support 22.31 (2.64), physical job demand 15.22 (2.18), job insecurity 8.72 (4.06) were found. Decision latitude and social support dimensions had a low level, which indicates higher stress. Moreover, psychological job demand, as well as physical job demand, had a high level which indicates high stress. According to results demonstrate that psychological job demand and physical job demand have a strong association with all dimensions of fatigue ( P high level of job stress was found in the study population. Physical demand was identified as the most effective factor in fatigue. Designing comprehensive intervention that accounts for psychosocial aspects of work environment especially the physical demand for decreasing stress and fatigue, can improve health care quality and also prevent medical errors.

Background and this study presents an integration of past research and theory that models the impact of the different levels of psychosocial stress and job performance. According to this model, the causal relationship between the different levels of psychosocial stress and job performance are considerable.
The integrated model of this study was presented based on of past research and theory models. Data to test the proposed models were collected from bank employees. Different path models were developed and goodness-of- fit of models was evaluated. Correlation coefficient regression analysis by forward method and T-test was used to evaluate the relationship between variables. Alpha level less than 0.05 were considered significance.
The result of study suggested a positive and direct relationship between stress in "task level" and "socio-organizational level“with perceived stress of employees. Too, the negative and indirect relationship between scales "organizational culture" and "leadership style" from socio-organizational level with job performance was showed.
The results of the relationship between psychosocial stress and job performance can be achieved more accurate by using the model in similar the population with the same demographic characteristics.

Foot anthropometric dimensions could be useful in design of comfortable footwear. The objective of this study was the measurement of foot anthropometric dimensions in a group of students.
This study was a descriptive one in which 21 dimensions of foot for 580 men and women were measured manually. To measure the foot dimensions a digital caliper and a tape were used. The measured dimensions included the important lengths, widths, heights and girths of foot. Descriptive statistics such as percentiles, mean and standard deviation were calculated for the collected data. To test and survey of the mean of foot dimensions between men and women, statistics such as independent T-test and effect size (Cohen’s d) were used.
The values of mean, standard deviation, the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles were calculate and were tabulated for the total studied population and for gender. In the all measured foot dimensions, men had bigger dimensions than women. Gender had different impacts on the measured foot dimensions. The mean of all foot dimensions was significantly different between men and women (Pvalue=0.001). Digital pattering of I and II were observed in 78% and 22% of the studied population, respectively.
In the present study, important anthropometric data of foot were collected for a group of students. Presented percentiles could be used in design of male and female shoes. Conducting similar studies in children population with different age categories could help completion of the anthropometric database.

Power and pinch hand grip strengths are major clinical and ergonomic parameters contributing to the hand muscle power. The data on hand grip strength measurements can have many benefits, including application in the design of hand tools. The present study was conducted to measure power hand grip strength among male and female students aged 19 to 36 using a Jamar Dynamometer and to compare their measurement data with the data obtained from other groups of the population. The present cross sectional study was conducted on 234 male and female students aged 19-36 in Urmia University of Medical Sciences. Hand grip strength was measured using Jamar hand dynamometer and according to the Southampton protocol for adult grip strength measurement. The mean (±standard deviation of) hand grip strength calculated was 44.39 (±9.71) in the male students 20.48 (±5.86) in the female students. A high correlation was observed between the power hand grip strength in the left and right hands (r=0.94 and P<0.001) and a significant difference then between the power hand grip strength in the dominant and non-dominant hands. The findings of the present study and similar studies about power hand grip strength in the Iranian population can be used by ergonomists and manufacturers to improve the design of hand tools and the performance of tasks requiring hand muscle power.

Adaptive performance is defined as an employee’s ability to deal with changes and new and unusual situations in the workplace. The present study mainly focused on factor analysis of the Adaptive Performance Scale (APS) and determining its validity and reliability. Adaptive performance is a multi-dimensional structure with five latent factors. This method validation study was conducted in Ahvaz، Iran. 210 randomly selected public hospital nurses completed the Persian version of the APS. Exploratory factor analysis (varimax rotation) was used to explore the factor structure of the scale. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied to fit the model. The overall reliability of the APS was confirmed (Cronbach’s alpha = 0. 89). Factor analysis was used to evaluate the factor structure of the scale. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin index (0. 88) and Bartlett''s sphericity test result (1639. 093) were both significant. Finally، varimax rotation showed all items to have significant factor loadings. Our findings confirmed the acceptable psychometric properties (reliability and validity) of the APS for administration among nurses. Therefore، the adaptive performance construct contains five distinct dimensions، namely dealing with emergency and unexpected situations، work stress management، creative problem solving، learning، and interpersonal adaptability. These results are consistent with previous studies.

Nature of the work in control rooms is such that it can be classified as sophisticated with high-cognitive load jobs and, therefore, the prevention of human error seems to be necessary. A nalysis of cognitive tasks is the first and important step for designing preventive programs. This study was conducted to identify, quantify and compare the cognitive requirements of different occupations in the control rooms of a petrochemical industry. In this cross-sectional and descriptive-analytical study, Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) and Fleishman Job Analysis Survey (FJAS) methods were used. The samples were 20 expert control room operators from leaders, board operators and site operators with 40.9 ± 6.98 years of old and 17.05 ± 6.25 years of work experience, which voluntary participated in this study. The One-Way ANOVA and Tukey HSD tests were used for Statistical data analysis via SPSS version 17. Based on the results of HTA –as the first CTA phase- 8 subtasks in leadership, board operator and site operator tasks were recognized. In addition, 12 cognitive requirements were defined for studied tasks via CTA. The FJAS scores indicated that 70% of recognized requirements in CTA are in moderate to high levels (the FJAS mean score higher than 4) which obligates a relatively high cognitive ability to operators. The Tukey HSD test results revealed no significant difference in cognitive requirements level of leadership and board operator tasks, as well as board operators and site operators. However, it was significantly different between leadership and site operator tasks (P value <0.05). This study indicated numerous and relatively, high level cognitive requirements of tasks in petrochemical control rooms, especially, among board operators. Moreover, due to the ability of scaling and analyzing various parameters, FJAS can be considered not only as a complementary but also as an alternative for CTA.

urmia unvercity of medical science, Study Type: Research | Subject: Ergonomics | Received: 2013/07/9 - Accepted: 2013/10/26 - Published: 2014/09/15 Long term working in a static and awkward posture is known as an important risk factorof work related musculoskeletal disorders in hand carpet weavers. Inappropriate workstation and awkward posture can increase the electrical activity and fatigue in muscles. The aim of this study was the measurement of muscle load and fatigue by surface electromyography and Borg CR-10 scale methods. Two typical carpet weaving workstations (A: seated with cross legged posture and B: seated on chair) were simulated in the laboratory and 12 women carpet weavers with mean age of 32.5 years, without any musculoskeletal problems in upper limb were invited to this study and they were asked to work in each workstation in separate days for 3 hours. Surface EMG signal recordings were done during these 3 hours for four muscles (bilateral trapezius and bilateral deltoid) andall subjects were asked to report shoulder region fatigue in Borg CR-10 rating scale. The RMS and MF values were extracted form row EMG signal to estimate the muscle activity and fatigue. The result of this study shown that muscle activity in all muscles under the test in workstation A is higher than workstation B (P <0.05). In comparison between the muscles, the mean RMS of the trapezius is higher than bilateral deltoid (P<0.01). Joint analysis of spectral and amplitude for estimating the muscle fatigue shown that muscle fatigue incidence in workstation B is more than workstation A. In comparison between Borg CR-10 rating scale, there is no significant difference in two workstations. According to these results, it can be concluded that working in two workstations can increase the risk of work related musculoskeletal disorders in shoulder region and further studies and hence, designing the ergonomic workstation for carpet weavings is necessary

Human errors for long time have been on spotlight of safety and Ergonomics experts due to accidents and disrupted performance، planning، and human projections. After the failure of the theory of zero-error culture، new approaches «error management culture» with a positive look at the error، the human and the system introduces. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between culture of fault and safety consequences among employees in a petrochemical industry. This study was a cross-sectional that was run among random sample of 424 individuals who were the employees of a petrochemical industry.. EOQ contained 5 scale and 19 items in Likret scale. Safety outcomes which includes events that occurred during past year، was assessed with four questions about the self-report. The Chi-square test was used to analyze the data، and to determine significant relationships. The mean of (EOQ) total score was 69. 91 with a standard deviation of 7. 34. The results of the Chi-square test of EOQ Score with minor injuries، serious injuries and damage to equip-ment revealed significant relationships. A significant relationship has been found between some error culture scale and safety outcomes. The result show the relationship between error culture and reduction of safety out-comes، our results are in line with previous research suggesting that an organizational climate of open communication with a focus on problem-solving and learning is vital to safety. We hope that future research by overcoming on limitations and shortcomings of the present study، with confirming of the findings of this study، introduced the error culture as an effective factor on safety.

Patient Manual handling is one of the major risk factors in musculoskeletal disorders among healthcare workers (HCWs). Therefore، the purpose of this study was to estimate the mechanical force on the low back of the staff responsible for patient manual handling and to exam in the effect of patient manual handling by two people on the level forces exerted on HCWs low back. the participants of this study were 10 health care workersdoing patient manual handling individually and by two people. To determine the posture of these people، we filmed them both from front and side and force plate was used to determine the weight of the patient handling by HCWs. 3DSSPP was used to estimate theforces exerted on the their low back during patient manual handling. Results showed that among the four studied tasks، the maximum compression forces exerted on discs L4/L5 and L5/S1 were 3591 ± 863 and 3342 ± 827 respectively when the patient was seated on wheelchair. The Maximum shear force exerted on the disc L4/L5 and L5/S1 were 252 ± 122 432 ± 36 N respectively when patient was seated on the bed. No significant difference was seen in the average forces exerted on low back except seating patient on wheelchair. (P> 0. 05) The comparison of exerted force on disks with recommended limits revealed that only the task of placing patient on wheelchair exerted force on low back exceed NIOSH recommended weight limit. patient manual handling by two people most tasks of this study does not created significant difference. Therefore to reduce exert force on low back need ergonomic intervention including bed design، beds appropriate stabilization، training.

Prolonged standing in static posture during occupational tasks has been associated with low back pain (LBP). Increased bilateral gluteus medius (GM) muscles co-activation is considered to be the most predisposing factor for LBP development during prolonged standing in asymptomatic individual. Change and modify flooring in occupational environment is common ergonomic intervention to alleviate problems caused by prolonged standing such as LBP. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of anti-fatigue floor mat on bilateral GM co-activation pattern and subjective pain in the low back. The study was conducted on 16 asymptomatic participants while they were doing simulated light occupational tasks in two conditions for two hours as follows: 1) standing on a hard floor, 2) standing on an anti-fatigue floor mat. In any standing condition, at the beginning of standing and every 15 minutes until 120 minutes, muscle co-activation of bilateral GM and subjective pain in the low back region has been collected respectively by surface electromyography (EMG) and visual analog scale (VAS). There were no significant difference in bilateral GM co-activation pattern in participants between two conditions (P=0.776), but anti-fatigue floor mat presented a significantly decreased level of subjective pain in the low back. Although 73% of participants were indicating that they would use the anti-fatigue mat if they were in an occupational setting that required prolonged standing work, but results about the effect of anti-fatigue floor mat on LBP based on an increase of >10mm on VAS threshold indicated that this intervention has no significant effect on decreased LBP development and co-activation of bilateral GM muscles in both pain developer and non pain developer groups. Apparently anti-fatigue mat were useful in decreasing LBP, although objectively it did not have any significant changes in muscle activity patterns that associated with LBP.