2018 Volume 11 Issue 1 Pages 3-8
It has been reported that there are many cases where care workers develop musculoskeletal disorders such as backaches. They frequently manually move patients horizontally up or down when they are lying in a dorsal position, which puts a large load on care workers’ skeletal muscles, particularly the lower back. In this study, researchers examined whether the physical burden on care workers could be mitigated by adjusting the bed height and using sliding sheets when they manually fix patients’ sleeping positions.
The results showed sliding sheet usage decreased the chest acceleration signal when working at higher position than a lower one. When care workers worked with a lower position without sliding sheets, their average heart rate increased. Additionally, with a higher bed position while using sliding sheets, muscular active mass was mitigated by 60% on deltoids, 51% on biceps brachii and 59% on paraspinal muscles of the back compared to results without sliding sheets (P<0.05). It indicated that bed height and sliding sheet usage can mitigate the physical burden on care workers.
