Ergonomics Effort Analysis of Employees in Medical Care Institution for Elderly PeopleSummary: The physical workload has the major effect on medical personnel, who have the task of lifting and shifting patients in medical institutions and other environments. Research of this aspect is the central problem in evaluating human work from an ergonomic point of view. In a home for elderly people a framework of ergonomic analyses of the activities of the employees has been carried out to assess the positions that are most strenuous. In the analysis a method of measuring pressure changes in the abdominal cavity was used. Many researchers, such as Mairiaux, Davis, Stubbs, Kuprešak, Šaric and Muftic, have addressed the problems of reliably establishing the measurement of these pressure changes. They all have found a functional dependence between the lumbar moment at the L4/L5 level and the abdominal cavity pressure. A biomechanical solution to this problem was previously found by applying two-dimensional biomechanical models. However, the results implied a load symmetry in both arms, which, in fact does not apply to most types of human work in a clinical environment. Therefore, we have performed a tri-dimensional analysis, taking into account several aspects of the spatial distribution of the workload, i.e. the weight of particular body segments and of other process weights, on the abdominal pressure of medical employees in the described environment. From the point of view of ergonomic valorization, the abdominal pressure should not exceed 20 kPa. The results of the analysis show that the work overload carried out by medical personnel by far exceeds allowed overload values. Such a finding is a demand and a task for both the designers of the working environment and for ergonomic experts to find better solutions in order to avoid unwanted consequences of the overload.
Karin Costas Mady
|