Occupation-related musculoskeletal pain in school teachers: A cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Background: Teaching profession demands the high level of physical and psychological involvement. Musculoskeletal pain is common among different professionals. The study is aimed to find out the occurrence of musculoskeletal pain among teachers and its correlation with occupation. Methods: One hundred and nine government school teachers participated in the study. The presence of musculoskeletal pain was assessed by using nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire and job-related stress was assessed by new brief job stress questionnaire. Pearson's correlation was used to correlate the musculoskeletal disorder and job-related stress. Results: The study reports that participants experienced musculoskeletal pain at various joints in last 12 months; 62.39% reported neck pain, 41.28% reported shoulder pain, 40.37% reported upper back pain, 9.7% reported elbow pain, 23.85% reported wrist pain, 31.20% reported lower back pain, 10.09% reported hip pain, 34.86% reported knee pain, and 29.36% reported ankle pain. A strong positive correlation was found between job-related stress and neck pain (r = 0.19, P = 0.04) and job-related stress and lower back pain (r = 0.37, P = 0.00). Conclusion: From the study, it can be concluded that school teachers increased job-related stress has direct impact on the occurrence of the musculoskeletal pain.