Iranian Journal of Ergonomics

Introduction: One of the major problems in hospitals leading to high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among the health staff is associated with patients handling. This study was aimed to reduce musculoskeletal disorders using ergonomic intervention among Nahavand Alimoradian hospital staff.

Material and Methods: This study was conducted in four wards of 160-bed Nahavand Alimoradian hospital. The data collecting tool was Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire. SPSS software was used for data analysis. The questionnaire was completed, before and after educational intervention, for 46 employees of the four wards which had the most complaints about musculoskeletal disorders. Training classes were held for the target group covering prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, proper techniques for patient handling and stretching exercises for low back pain prevention.

Results: The main results tended to be the high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders especially in low back, shoulders and wrists of the employees. Low back pain was the most prevalent disorder among the personnel. The educational intervention had not significant effect on lessening the musculoskeletal disorders in hospital staff (p > 0.05).

Introduction: High prevalence of neck pain has become an important health complain among dental practitioners which is followed by reduced working performance, burnout and early retirement. The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between individual and occupational risk factors as well as forward head posture (FHP) with dentist’s neck pain and to determine the priority of these factors in the development of the neck pain.

Material and Methods: In this cross - sectional study, 70 dentists of two dental centers in Tehran were examined with clinical testing of FHP. Individual and job characteristics were collected by means of a questionnaire. The visual analog scale (VAS) was applied in order to determine the severity of pain in various parts of the body. Spearman and Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple linear regressions were used to examine the relationship and effect of the studied variables in creating the neck pain.

Results: According to the results, neck was the most painful part of the body (66.6%). Indeed, 40 (57.1%) of participating dentists were suffering from the forward head posture. The results of the multiple linear regression showed that the FHP with the standard coefficient (β= 0.64) was the most influential factor in predicting the incidence of neck pain.

Conclusion: The FHP has a greater impact than any other individual and job factors in creating neck pain. It may be concluded that awkward neck posture is the most important risk factor for neck pain in static sitting jobs such as dentistry.

Introduction: Despite the introduction and development of agricultural mechanization in the dairy farm sector of Iran, many tasks are still performed by manual labor in the country’ dairy farms, including milking, and necessitate poor body postures and movements that help increase the risk of musculoskeletal disorders among hand milking workers.

Material and Methods: The present study was conducted to assess the postural workload of workers during hand milking in the dairy farms of Ramin Agriculture and Natural Resources University and Ramhormoz county. Three milking techniques were assessed, including traditional hand milking, milking stanchion (mobile milking unit) and tandem parlor milking (the double-3 tandem). The postural workloads of 34 male milking workers were evaluated through mixed-methods.

Results: The results obtained showed that hand and stanchion milking require major parts of the body to be in a bent position over 70% of the time due to the operations taking place at a low height from the ground. In contrast, tandem milking required the body to be in a straight position over 90% of the time due to the operations taking place at a substantial height from the ground. Moreover, in terms of finger posture, all three techniques required the workers’ five fingers to be wrapped around different milking tools and parts of the cattle throughout the processes.

Conclusion: Being bent for long periods of time during the process of hand and stanchion milking and standing upright for long periods during tandem milking both caused musculoskeletal disorders of the back and backache for workers of both traditional and mechanized milking. In the case of the finger posture, prolonged repetitive finger postures decrease for milking workers with the increased mechanization of milking.