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Abstract
Physical effort of workload of female employees in the healthcare system is perceived to rise. Research focused mainly on physical activity levels of registered nurses (RN). Therefore, we investigated physical strain during daily routine of other hospital workers next to RN. O2uptake, heart rate, breathing frequency and ventilation were measured in 33 female medical (associate) professionals (MAP) and Cleaners&Helpers (Cl&H) using Oxycon Mobile. Physical work load was compared to standardized CPET. Wilcoxon-test and ANOVA were calculated using SPSS 20.0. Cl&H performed heavy-lifting and had the lowest power during CPET. The O2-uptake for heavy-lifting as strong effort, differed significantly from office work (p < 0.001) and bedside-patient-care (p = 0.001). Compared with metabolic equivalent (MET) cleaning, heavy-lifting, and office work are underestimated. Bedside-patient-care, walking, pushing performed by MAP are overestimated. While Cl&H had the lowest maximal power in CPET, their work required the highest O2-uptake. The tasks are underestimated in the MET-tables.
Acknowledgements
We thank Frau Giesser for visiting the participants at their workplace and taking all necessary measurements. We also thank her for her preparatory work concerning this manuscript.
Consent for publication
The manuscript does not contain individual person’s data in any form.
Disclosure statement
All authors declare no financial conflicts. There was no commercial funder. All authors are employees of the Federal University in Gießen.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Justus-Liebig University in Gießen (Az.: 251/11) with an appendix dated March 5, 2014. All participants gave their written informed consent.