Abstract
Hospital meal carts are used to deliver meals, drugs and some other materials to patients in the hospital environment. These carts which are moved manually by operators, the health workers, mostly do not comply with ergonomics guidelines and physical requirements of the equipment users in terms of anthropometry data of the region thus increasing the risk of musculoskeletal disorder among the meal cart users. This study carried out ergonomic evaluation of the available meal carts in some western Nigeria hospitals. A well-structured questionnaire has two major segments: Operational survey and biomechanical survey, which were administered to the health workers using hospital meal carts in some hospitals in southwestern Nigeria, and physical assessment, which was undertaken to collect data for the ergonomic evaluation. The responses from the questionnaires show that some areas on the existing hospital meal carts are of concern to the users which need to be improved upon.
Highlights
Manual vehicles such as carts, hand trucks, wheel barrows and just to mention a few have been of great advantage to the transportation of materials due to the presence of wheels
The feelings on the other body regions reveal no significant difference in the responses of the users (Table 2) to the level of discomfort experienced during the use of the existing hospital meal cart
Based on the result obtained from the ergonomic evaluation of the hospital carts, the following conclusions are made: 1. The position of the handle is of concern to the users as the height is too high for most of the users which resulted in discomfort especially on the shoulder and upper back, the need for repositioning to accommodate both 5 % tile users and 95 % tile users
Summary
Manual vehicles such as carts, hand trucks, wheel barrows and just to mention a few have been of great advantage to the transportation of materials due to the presence of wheels. Jung et al (2005) revealed that the use of hospital meal carts was designed to ease the burden of manual material handling on workers, and it has been shown to be efficient because of less energy used per time. A structured questionnaire was developed for the purpose of identifying the ergonomic, design and other problems associated with the existing hospital meal carts (a copy of questionnaire is shown in ‘‘Appendix 1’’).Through direct observation and one-on-one interviews with experienced operators and supervisors, relevant information on task performance, equipment and working posture was obtained. (b) Biomechanical section: This has to do with the level of discomfort experience by the workers as they make use of the conventional hospital meal carts as well as the overall rating of the job done It considers the major part of the body that is involved in the operation of the carts.
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