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Ergonomic Study of Nursing Tasks in Surgical Hospital Services

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Health and Social Care Systems of the Future: Demographic Changes, Digital Age and Human Factors (HEPS 2019)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1012))

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Abstract

Nurses are exposed to Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WMSD) risk factors mainly due to biomechanical overload caused by patient handling, among other tasks. In order to specifically assess the nurses’ patient handling risks and also to evaluate their musculoskeletal symptoms frequency, Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) method and Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire were applied, respectively, in the surgical internment services of a central hospital in northern of Portugal. First, a data collection was carried out, and then an objective risk assessment was performed by observing the different postures adopted. Results show that the majority of nurses reported musculoskeletal pain in several body regions, being the lumbar and cervical regions the most affected. The REBA assessment showed that patients handling is a task with a significant WMSD risk, mainly due to force application and awkward postures adoption. The main contributes of this work consisted in giving a special attention to the working conditions in the analyzed environments, and also highlight the need to develop new strategies to prevent WMSD, in order to avoid absenteeism and an increasing development of musculoskeletal problems among nurses.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, ALGORITMI Centre, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Paula Carneiro, Ana Colim & Pedro Arezes

  2. Lucus Augusti Hospital, Servizo Galego de Saúde, Lugo, Spain

    Alberto Villarroya

  3. Surgical Internment Services, Hospital of Braga, Braga, Portugal

    Madalena Torres

Authors
  1. Paula Carneiro
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  2. Alberto Villarroya
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  3. Ana Colim
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  4. Madalena Torres
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  5. Pedro Arezes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paula Carneiro .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Laboratório de Ergonomia, CIAUD, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Teresa Patrone Cotrim

  2. Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública, Centro de Investigação em Saúde Pública, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Florentino Serranheira

  3. Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública, Centro de Investigação em Saúde Pública, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Paulo Sousa

  4. Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

    Sue Hignett

  5. Centre for Patient Safety, Tuscany, Italy

    Sara Albolino

  6. Careggi University Hospital, Clinical Risk Management and Patient Safety Center, Tuscany, Italy

    Riccardo Tartaglia

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Carneiro, P., Villarroya, A., Colim, A., Torres, M., Arezes, P. (2019). Ergonomic Study of Nursing Tasks in Surgical Hospital Services. In: Cotrim, T., Serranheira, F., Sousa, P., Hignett, S., Albolino, S., Tartaglia, R. (eds) Health and Social Care Systems of the Future: Demographic Changes, Digital Age and Human Factors. HEPS 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1012. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24067-7_4

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