Nursing assistants with a lower body mass index, a higher-level position, and a work-through-pain workstyle have greater odds of experiencing work-related shoulder injuries, according to a new study from Hong Kong.
Nursing assistants worldwide have ranked shoulders in the top three body parts at high risk of work-related injury, the researchers said. To determine what leads to these potentially debilitating musculoskeletal problems, they recruited 440 workers from 47 Hong Kong nursing homes to answer validated questionnaires on the subject.
Participants responded to queries about their perceived physical exertion, workstyle, ergonomic and manual handling knowledge, and numerous additional work-related factors.
Fully 53% of the participants reported experiencing work-related musculoskeletal symptoms in their shoulders.
When results were adjusted for age and gender, the three main predictors stood out, reported first author Prof. Kin Cheung and colleagues from the School of Nursing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Efforts should be made to integrate “workstyle interventions” into lifestyle physical activity training for these workers, Cheung and colleagues stated.
“Redesigning jobs with more breaks and reducing the work demand, and introducing multidisciplinary exercise programs, should be explored further to improve workstyle behaviors and enhance the musculoskeletal health of nursing assistants,” the authors concluded.
The study was published online in the journal PeerJ.
