فهرست مطالب r. khanijazani

Participatory ergonomics is the concept of active participation of all components of an organization in the development and implementation of ergonomics knowledge in order to enhance the working environment, quality, productivity and safety of that organization. One of the main goals of participatory ergonomics is increasing employee's satisfaction and changing the workplace into an appropriate environment with minimal health and safety risks. This study aims to investigate the impact to implementing participatory ergonomics on the quality of worker's work life.

This interventional descriptive and analytical study has been carried out in one of the steel making companies of Iran during 2010-2011. In this study participatory ergonomics has been implemented in several stages. Evaluating the participant's quality of work life was performed using NIOSH quality of work life questionnaire before and after the intervention. For statistical analysis SPSS 16 for Windows was used and descriptive statistics and paired t-test was performed.

Although staff's quality of work life according to their average score of questionnaires was ranked in good level either before and after implementation of the participation ergonomics, results of paired T-test analysis showed a statistically significant improvement in the quality of working conditions of workers following such intervention (P<0/001).

Enhancement in the quality of work life has a considerable effect on achieving the goal of worker's health promotion and reducing accidents, and implementation of participatory ergonomics with cooperation of industry leaders can be considered as an effective step toward achieving worker's health and satisfaction.

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are the most common occupational diseases. Between industries، pottery، with several thousand years of activity، still retains its nature as a manual job. This has led to increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders among potters. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and related risk factors by OCRA method in Meybod potters in 2009.

This was a cross-sectional analytical study. Target population consisted of، all potters working in the pottery workshops in Meybod. There were 17 workshops with 54 potters. Information about the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders was collected using Nordic questionnaire. The OCRA method was used to assess risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders of upper limbs.

The results of Nordic questionnaire showed that approximately 59. 3% of the potters had at least one upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders in the last year. Wheel workers had the highest prevalence (34. 4%). Independent T-test showed no significant difference between the final score of OCRA index between potters with and without upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders (P=0. 047).

The results of this study showed that the risk of musculoskeletal disorders of upper extremities is high among potters. So it suggested that possible corrective actions take place as soon as possible and periodic evaluations are also necessary for early detection of these disorders.

It is well known that shift work produces fatigue. This effect is enhanced in seniors and could be potentiated by physical and psychosocial job demands. The aim of this study was to investigate the combined effects of work-related risk factors, age and shift work on fatigue.

The field study was performed based on a questionnaire about sleep characteristics, environmental work-place exposure and fatigue level. Objective noise exposure was also measured. The samples were composed of 201 shift workers of a chemical industry in France. They were divided into two age groups (<40 and >40 years).

No significant effect of temperature, vibration, chemical agents, ergonomics and psychosocial factors was found on fatigue. However, noise exposure resulted in an increase in subjective fatigue (P<0.0001). Older shift workers reported more fatigue than the younger ones (P<0.01). Concerning sleep characteristics, sleep duration progressively decreased from evening to morning shifts, night shift being intermediate (P<0.01). Older shift workers reported more sleep fragmentation (P<0.01), longer sleep duration in the morning shifts (P<0.05) and lesser in the night shifts (P<0.001). Combined effects of noise exposure and age were observed on sleep quality of night workers (P<0.01).

Older workers are less able to adjust to night work especially if they work in the noisy environments.