Investigation on Risk and Damages of Muscoloscheletal Apparatus of Health Care Workers: A Case Study on 3800 Nurses

Abstract

An investigation was carried out by teams from various centres coordinated by the EPM (Ergonomics of Posture and Movement) Research Unit on 54 different hospitals in various regions of northern and central Italy. The teams examined a total of 3800 health workers whose job involved manual handling of patients. Numerous meetings were held to ensure that the methods of assessing the exposure indexes and spinal impairment were identical in the various teams. The final data were processed centrally at the EPM Research Unit. Physical examination revealed that 8.4% of the workers had had at least one episode of acute low back pain in the previous 12 months: i.e., 4 times the values of the reference groups. The best association between index of exposure to manual patient handling and consequent injury was the association evaluated via the incidence rates of episodes of total low back pain.