Abstract
ObjectiveMedical personnel are at risk of musculoskeletal disorders but little is known whether the risk of musculoskeletal disorders were different among various medical professions. Therefore, this study compared the risk of musculoskeletal disorders among personnel of 10 different medical professions in Taiwan using a nationwide health claims database.MethodsData from the 2000–2010 Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database were used to identify personnel of 10 different medical professions. Diagnoses based on the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) were used to identify eight different musculoskeletal disorders that occurred after the license issuance date. Cox proportional hazards model was used to compare the risk of eight musculoskeletal disorders among the 10 different medical professions using dentists as the reference category.ResultsA total of 7,820 medical personnel were included in the analysis. Using dentists as the reference category, physical therapists showed a significantly higher risk of all eight musculoskeletal disorders (ranging from 1.59 [p = 0.032] in sprains and strains of other and unspecified parts of back to 2.93 [p < 0.001] in spondylosis and allied disorders).ConclusionsCompared with dentists, a profession that already known to suffer from high rates of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, physical therapists, registered nurses, and doctors of Chinese medicine showed an even higher risk of musculoskeletal disorders.
Highlights
The risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders is high among various healthcare professionals [1,2,3,4]
Data Availability Statement: The data utilized in this study cannot be made available in the manuscript, the supplemental files, or in a public repository due to the Taiwan Personal Information Protection Act but the data from the National Health Insurance Research Database is available for application from the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan for researchers who meet the criteria for data access
Diagnoses based on the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) were used to identify eight different musculoskeletal disorders that occurred after the license issuance date
Summary
Medical personnel are at risk of musculoskeletal disorders but little is known whether the risk of musculoskeletal disorders were different among various medical professions. This study compared the risk of musculoskeletal disorders among personnel of 10 different medical professions in Taiwan using a nationwide health claims database. Data Availability Statement: The data utilized in this study cannot be made available in the manuscript, the supplemental files, or in a public repository due to the Taiwan Personal Information Protection Act but the data from the National Health Insurance Research Database is available for application from the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan for researchers who meet the criteria for data access. Further information regarding data access is available at the National Health Research Institutes website (http:// nhird.nhri.org.tw) or by email to nhird@nhri.org.tw.
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