Capacity Of Workers Research Articles

Risk Indicators in Low Back Pain

Injuries leading to low back pain can occur by direct trauma, overexertion or repetitive trauma. Overexertion is claimed by 60% of low back pain patients as the cause of injury. Of these patients with overexertion injuries, 66% implicated lifting and 20% pushing or pulling. It is, however, difficult to relate the workplace to the complaint of low back pain in a specific worker, and low back pain is found quite often in those with sedentary occupations. The incidence, severity and potential disability are all related to the demands on the individual in the workplace. Among the factors implicated are the requirements for lifting (particularly when compared to the worker's lifting capacity), pushing and pulling, posture, and cyclic loading. Drivers of heavy vehicles have two to four times the average incidence of serious low back pain. This is probably due to the cyclic loading environment. The general psychosocial environment (including that at work) is an important risk factor. The first attack of low back pain occurs in the teens or twenties. Low back pain is as frequent in females as males, although women in manual materials handling jobs are at greater risk. Posture, anthropometry and mobility measures have limited prognostic value. Muscle strength and physical fitness probably have some value. Radiographic findings have little pragmatic value.

Clinical pulmonary function tests as predictors of work performance during respirator wear.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandate requiring medical information for respirator users provides the physician with little or no guidance as to what objective criteria may be valuable in assessing the worker's ability to use a respirator safely. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to use the results of clinical pulmonary function testing to predict performance time on maximal- and endurance-type exercise tests. Respirator mask wear reduced clinical pulmonary function measures from 7%-15% from mouthpiece controls. The resistances of the mask reduced forced vital capacity by an average of 11.6% (0.65 L); forced expiratory volume in 1 sec by 7.3% (0.33 L); and maximum voluntary ventilation in 15 sec by 7.4% (12.4 L/min). Stepwise linear regression analysis was used to determine the clinical pulmonary function measures that were the best predictors of work performance. The MVV.25 with the respirator was determined to be the best predictor of maximal exercise performance both with and without the respirator. The difference in peak inspired flow with and without the respirator was the best predictor of performance time with the respirator during the endurance walk to exhaustion. Recommendations are made to the physician for procedures for determining a worker's pulmonary capacity and calculating the effect of the respirator in reducing that capacity. This information then will allow the physician to determine safe levels of ventilation for a particular work task.

Clinical Pulmonary Function Tests as Predictors of Work Performance during Respirator Wear

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandate requiring medical information for respirator users provides the physician with little or no guidance as to what objective criteria may be valuable in assessing the worker's ability to use a respirator safely. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to use the results of clinical pulmonary function testing to predict performance time on maximal- and endurance-type exercise tests. Respirator mask wear reduced clinical pulmonary function measures from 7%–15% from mouthpiece controls. The resistances of the mask reduced forced vital capacity by an average of 11.6% (0.65 L); forced expiratory volume in 1 sec by 7.3% (0.33 L); and maximum voluntary ventilation in 15 sec by 7.4% (12.4 L/min). Stepwise linear regression analysis was used to determine the clinical pulmonary function measures that were the best predictors of work performance. The MVV.25 with the respirator was determined to be the best predictor of maximal exercise performance both with and without the respirator. The difference in peak inspired flow with and without the respirator was the best predictor of performance time with the respirator during the endurance walk to exhaustion. Recommendations are made to the physician for procedures for determining a worker's pulmonary capacity and calculating the effect of the respirator in reducing that capacity. This information then will allow the physician to determine safe levels of ventilation for a particular work task.

Prevention, an institutional perspective: hospital/medical centres--a summary.

In our concern with injuries in the workplace, we pay close attention to the worker. The injury brings together all the medical skills for the crisis event. It is from the point of view of treatment in the hospital that the opportunity for research, prevention, and education presents itself. Not only the rain of injury but the soil of the worker that it falls upon is the focus of the solution to the problems of injury in the workplace. At the Hospital for Joint Diseases Orthopaedic Institute we have founded the Occupational and Industrial Orthopaedic Center to act as a research and consulting resource to industry in order to explore these problems. In a review and analysis of injuries, our group developed a complete test battery, including psychological, physiological and mechanical evaluation of the worker's capacity and the workplace requirement. This multidisciplinary team approach is necessary to understand the complexity of work, the worker, and to prevent chronicity. For example, the involvement of the psychologist in correlating emotional stress to physical injury and dysfunction provides insight for prevention opportunities. The rheumatologist's understanding of arthritis and its relation to back pain and reduced muscle functioning coordinates with that of the orthopaedist. It is the medical dialogue taking place within the hospital that gives guidance to the industrial engineer and the ergonomist. Together with the educator we can develop preventative training programmes for the worker and supervisor. Further, we can provide assistance to government in legislative and regulatory support of providing a safe and effective work environment for the productive worker.

Workplace injuries in the developing countries.

Transfer of technology and industrial development without consideration for the characteristics of the local users and the environmental conditions of the recipient countries has proved to be not only socially destructive but economically expensive in terms of human suffering and material losses Most developing countries (DC) are paying an unacceptably high price in terms of suffering, sickness and also loss of production due to work-related accidents Poor working conditions and non-existence of an effective injury prevention programme in many DCs has resulted in a very high sickness and accident rate. In such circumstances, the salary and social benefits of the worker are low, because productivity is well below its capacity. This vicious cycle also results in the worker's malnutrition and low working capacity, resulting in turn in greater vulnerability to disease and job-related accidents A greater awareness is needed among employers and the workforce of such common problems as increased health hazards, ...

Psychophysical Modeling of Manual Materials-Handling Capacities Using Isoinertial Strength Variables

Strength testing has been used to determine a worker's physical capacity as well as to screen an individual for placement in future employment. A comparison is made of the relationships between two types of strenght tests (isometric and isoinertial) and the manual materials-handling (MMH) capacities of individuals. Four MMH activities were evaluated: lifting from floor to knuckle height, lifting from knuckle to shoulder height, lowering from knuckle to floor height, and carrying for a 4.3-m distance. Psychophysical capacities were determined under three frequency conditions: one-time maximum, 1 lift/min, and 6 lifts/min. I soinertial 1.83-m maximum strength (Tl), tested on the incremental weight-lifting machine, proved to be the most highly correlated strength test to the capacities for MMH activities. Second-order polynomial regression models for MMH capacities were developed using T1as a predictor. The isoinertial strength test T1 is recommended as the most promising single screening test because of its simplicity and task similarity.

Equal employment opportunity under title VII and the exclusion of fertile women from the toxic workplace.

Many modern work environments expose employees to the risk of injury from toxic substances. Attention to this risk may extend beyond the immediate concern for the worker's personal health, to concern that the worker's capacity to produce healthy offspring may be impaired. The conditions of employment in a particular workplace may require exposure to chemical agents that are toxic to the reproductive system of one sex and not of the other, toxic to the reproductive processes in both sexes, toxic to the developing fetus but not to the adult, or a combination of the above. Employers that exclude susceptible members of one sex from the workplace in order to prevent exposure to toxic agents, do so at the risk of violating federal employment discrimination law.

The social worker new to health care: basic learning tasks.

The authors review twelve evaluations of MSW social workers new to an acute care hospital and discuss the evaluative findings in a context of problems, teaching content and learning gains. Specific practice problems are matched with specific teaching content and learning carry-over. The positives of structure and mutuality in the evaluation process are emphasized as aids for the worker in achieving practice effectiveness and in strengthening the worker's capacity for professional self-direction.

People: Their Capacities, Limitations, and Expectations in Pharmaceutical Industry

AbstractThis paper considers the human capacities and limitations of people performing industrial tasks. Using the Human Factors techniques of work physiology, anthropometry, and psychology, the worker's capacity for physical work is determined, his body dimension characteristics are considered, and his psychological expectations associated with the equipment are noted.

Type of Work and Motivation

nOCIOLOGISTS HAVE done much on motivation, yet most of this ois concerned with the capitalist entrepreneur who attracted attention as LJthe key individual in the system of free enterprlse.l As to the worker, we have to fall back on the field of Industrial Psychology to obtain a starting point. 2 There are, however, several obstacles. Observations by psychologists are frequently couched in terms of individual differences of aptitude and temperament; but in a sociological re-interpretation of the available material, this aspect must be eliminated. Furthermore, the distinction between general (physical) conditions of and conditions specific to different occupations and types of does not appear to be of great importance in the context of Industrial Psychology. The two terms conditions of work and type of work are often used in close association and they both refer chiefly to the physical characteristics of a job or the environment in which it takes place. This practice has its advantages so long as the emphasis is on the worker's capacity, for in many types of the specific conditions inherent in the actual operation are inseparable from the general conditions of the workplace. Thus, we cannot describe the specific characteristics of iron smelting without reference to the general conditions of excessive heat all round. As far as working capacity (and fatigue as impaired capacity) is concerned, there is indeed no point in distinguishing between what is specific to any particular operation and general conditions such as heat, dust, noise, lighting and dirt. But the moment we approach the matter from the worker's subjective experience, as we must when dealing with problems of motivation, the distinction between specific and general conditions becomes of crucial importance. In what follows we shall use the word specific when refelTing to the concrete type of , and the term conditions of shall denote the general physical environment of a job. In an iron foundry, for example, each type of such as floor moulding, bench moulding, metal pouring and cleaning of castings has its own specific characteristics, while the conditions of heat,

The Worker's Leisure and His Individuality

It is in the many leisure hours that the individuality of the person and the destiny of the nation are being developed. Creative instincts baffled: Specialization and the invention of machines have taken the creative element out of most work. The future of industry holds forth no promise of improvement in this condition in spite of educational palliatives and the hope of democratization. The opportunity of afterwork hours: Americans have had a shortsighted and negative conception of leisure time. The shortened work day leaves the worker a surplus of energy with which he may meet his spiritual needs and work out his destiny. The increase in his leisure intensifies the worker's obligation to self-development. The individual's responsibility: After democracy has given each one his chance, it is the individual's personal responsibility to develop his innate powers. Four activities in leisure hours that contribute to individual power: Candor and mental discipline may come to Americans through study. A hobby helps to develop individuality. Cultivating the play spirit has great personal and social benefits. One grows in stature in serving his community. The worker's desire and capacity for education and cultural activities: Whether it be Louis Pasteur's father toiling over garment worker, we find workers eager to give their spare time to gain knowledge that will enlarge their lives. Undeveped fields of leisure time opportunity: Universities and colleges may provide extension courses for workers emphasizing cultural subjects along the lines of the Amherst experiment. A still broader field lies in community organization of leisure-time activities on a nonsectarian, non-partisan, and non-commercial basis.