Multifaceted ergonomic intervention programme for community nurses: pilot study

Abstract

Title. Multifaceted ergonomic intervention programme for community nurses: pilot study. Aim. This paper is a report of a pilot study conducted to investigate the effect of a tailor-made ergonomic intervention programme for community nurses. Background. The nursing profession is known to be a high risk group for workrelated musculoskeletal disorders. Community nurses are at risk as they have to travel to patients' homes and work in varied environments daily. Their occupational risk factors are unique and intervention strategies need to be specially designed to address these issues. Method. The study was conducted from August 2007 to September 2008 in Hong Kong with community nurses from three hospitals. The intervention group (n = 14) received a multi-faceted ergonomic intervention programme over an 8-week period, with group training, onsite individual training, equipment modification, exercise programme, typing and computer workstation advice. The control group (n = 12) received no interventions. Both groups had baseline and follow-up assessments, which included musculoskeletal symptoms, perceived risk factors and functional outcome and physical mobility measures. Results. The intervention group showed statistically significantly improved symptom scores and neck and upper limb functional outcomes at postintervention. The control group showed no change in symptom or functional outcomes. Conclusion. A multifaceted intervention programme may be more effective than interventions that mainly focus on ergonomic training and could be considered by community or home care nursing groups in other countries. The programme was based on risk assessment and may be a useful reference for other nursing groups in other countries.

The impact of a multifaceted ergonomic intervention program on promoting occupational health in community nurses

“…These instruments have been validated in past research, with high scores for testeretest reliability and criterion validity, and the rationale for adopting these instruments were already reported in our pilot study (Szeto et al, 2010). Some physical mobility and strength measurements were also recorded to evaluate the effects of the exercise component.…”

“…(i) Perceived rate of exertion (RPE) for major work tasks, (ii) Self-reported musculoskeletal symptoms: prevalence, location and severity (based on a Chinese version (Yeung et al, 1999) of the Standardized Nordic Questionnaire (Kuorinka et al, 1987), (iii) Perceived physical risk factors that might contribute to musculoskeletal symptoms (Szeto and Lam, 2007;Szeto et al, 2010), (iv) Perceived psychosocial risk factors e questions were adopted from the Workstyle Short Form (Feuerstein and Nicholas, 2006), (v) Northwick Park Neck Pain Questionnaire, 'NPQ' (Chiu et al, 2001;Leak et al, 1994), (vi) the Chinese Oswestry Disability Score Index, 'CODI' (Fairbank et al, 1980;Chow and Chan, 2005), (Hudak et al, 1996;Lee et al, 2004).…”

“…In a pilot study reported earlier, we have examined the work of community nurses servicing the New Territories East region in Hong Kong, which is composed of a mixture of urban housing estates as well as rural residences (Szeto et al, 2010). Previous research on home care nursing service has mainly focused on the quality and outcome of nursing care in specialized areas such as palliative care (Candy et al, 2011), mental health (Keady, 2007) and pediatrics (Fraser et al, 2009).…”

“…Their main duties are to provide nursing care to patients who cannot travel to the local hospitals to receive such care, and this includes those who live at home as well as those who reside in private nursing homes that do not have adequate nursing support. Commonly performed tasks by the community nurses in Hong Kong include wound dressing, changing foley catheters, stoma care and medication checks (Szeto et al, 2010). Together the physical work demands have rendered these nurses vulnerable to cumulative stress and strain of the musculoskeletal system.…”

An Evaluation of the Effects of Human Factors and Ergonomics on Health Care and Patient Safety Practices: A Systematic Review

“…Most of the studies were from developed countries; eleven studies were conducted in the USA [25–35], two were conducted in Canada [36–37], ten studies were conducted in Europe [38–47], two studies were conducted in Hong Kong [48–49] and three studies were conducted in Israel, Brazil and Iran [50–52]. Twenty studies were controlled studies [25–27,29,32,34,36–44,46,48,49,51,52], two of which were RCTs [44, 51]. The other eight studies were before/after surveys, without a control group [28, 30, 31, 33, 35, 45, 47, 50].…”