Evaluation of ergonomic risks for work-related musculoskeletal disorders of nursing tasks in Korea

ABSTRACT

Among all industrial accident-induced diseases, musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are most prominently observed among nurses. The physical load of everyday tasks involved in nursing work was assessed in this study using a developed risk index, whereby the physical burden was evaluated using the exposure duration and work intensity levels. This survey targeted nine small, medium and large-sized hospitals in South Korea and categorized representative nursing tasks into six groups. The subtasks within these six categories (evaluated as high risk) included changing a patient’s posture and assisting with walkers or wheelchairs, transporting/handling drug carts, bathing patients, replacing bedding, traction therapy, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and artificial manual breathing unit, and computer work. The risk index ratio was significantly different by task type for each task. We demonstrated that the risk index developed in this study can be used to evaluate MSDs in hospitals.

KEYWORDS:

• nursing tasks
• risk index
• physical load
• musculoskeletal disorders

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea [grant 2022R1F1A1069384], [grant 2021R1I1A1A01050440].