ErgoPART: A Computerized Observational Tool to Quantify Postural Loading in Real-Time During Surgery

Abstract

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS Ergonomics postural assessment in realtime (ErgoPART) is a new job analysis tool designed to systematically characterize the postural demands of performing surgery. Tasks, equipment, and procedures that require ergonomic intervention can be identified. ErgoPART can also be used to quantify the benefits of ergonomic interventions that reduce the frequency and duration of non-neutral postures. Preliminary tests, conducted in the context of vaginal surgery, indicate that the tool is easy to learn and may allow broad categories of neck, shoulder, and trunk postures to be coded reliably. ErgoPART is freely available for use. TECHNICAL ABSTRACT Background: Little quantitative information exists regarding the postural demands placed on surgeons in the operating room. One reason for this is the lack of minimally invasive tools available to characterize the duration and frequency of non-neutral postures during surgery. Purpose: The objective of this study was to develop an ergonomics job analysis tool to evaluate, in real-time, the postural requirements of performing surgeries with minimal intrusion to the work, and to complete a preliminary evaluation of the tool. Method: A team of vaginal surgeons first identified the need to systematically observe and characterize body postures during surgery. Ergonomics postural assessment in real-time (ErgoPART) is a computer-based tool that was developed via an iterative design process between these surgeons and ergonomics researchers, and designed to characterize environmental, task, and postural variables during surgical work. A preliminary inter-observer reliability assessment was conducted during one vaginal surgery, involving four observers with varying degrees of ergonomics experience. Results: ErgoPART's data collection interface facilitates recording of basic information about the surgery, task information, surgeon's position with respect to the surgical field, operating room features, and tracking of This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. broad categories of neck, trunk, and shoulder postures. A unique feature is that the computer interface provides visual feedback about the status of postural codes in the form of a virtual mannequin and dynamic color-coded buttons to reduce coding misclassification during observation. Quantitative information about the frequency and duration of non-neutral body posture categories for the entire surgery, and for specific surgical tasks, is available immediately after the observations are completed via Microsoft Excel TM spreadsheets. Measures of interobserver reliability indicated that the tool may provide a reliable assessment of the duration and frequency of surgeons' non-neutral postur...

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“…However, impact of these novel techniques on the Generally, workload has been considered as "costs incurred by a human operator to achieve a particular level of performance" and evolves from interactions between task demands, circumstances and personal skills, behavior, and perceptions (Noyes and Bruneau, 2007). For physical workload, there are observational methods to analyze body posture (Zhu et al, 2014(Zhu et al, , 2017 and more recently more objective measures such as Inertial Movement Units (IMUs) (Morrow et al, 2016). Workload can also be measured objectively with EMG, heart rate or using subjective measures, such as the body part discomfort (Kuorinka et al, 1987), NASA-TLX (Hart and Staveland, 1988), and SURG-TLX (Wilson et al, 2011).…”

Evaluation of the surgeon’s workplace in elective procedures: a descriptive study in two Brazilian public hospitals

“…The results are shown in the following figures. Regarding the problems categorized in the Physical/ Environmental item, also considering the scale of the questionnaire of 0 (not satisfied) and 15 (very satisfied), the EDIs for ambient noise (7,13) and Lighting (7,38) presented results below the Average of Satisfaction. The EDIs for room temperature (8.43) and air quality (8.81) were slightly above the Average of Satisfaction (Figure 8).…”

“…During long-term surgeries, there were reports of pain/discomfort in the lumbar spine and shoulders by continued use of these aprons. In the responses to the IEDs Occupational posture during surgery (7,35), Physical effort (8.23) and Mental effort required in their work (9,70), they show that respondents perceive these IEDs as medium intensity ergonomic constraints. [27][28][29][30][31][32] Regarding the perception of discomfort/pain levels, the results show that respondents perceived with dissatisfaction the presence of discomfort/pain for legs (6,55), fatigue at the end of the workday (6.62), shoulders (6.65), back (6,86), feet (6,88), neck (7,16) and presented average levels for arms (7,52), hands (8,12) and head (8,35).…”

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