Relationships of musculoskeletal disorder symptoms and perceived workload among hospital workers

This study attempts to investigate the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) among Korean hospital workers and to analyze the relationship of MSD symptoms and workload perceived by workers. This study designed a survey based on Nordic questionnaire to obtain MSD symptoms and the degree of four perceived workloads: work repetition, urgency, physical exertion and satisfaction. In this survey, more than 1,800 workers in a hospital participated. The prevalence of MSD was analyzed for each body part, and MSD cases, which were predetermined in this study, were identified. The relationship between the MSD cases and each perceived workload was analyzed using chi-square test. The pain in the shoulder was the most prevalent among the workers as 52%, and the lowback (37%) and leg discomfort (36%) followed. TheMSDcases of this study were also the most prevalent in the shoulder (13%). Female workers had higher rate of MSD cases than the males. Among the four workload variables, the physical exertion was the statistically related to MSD cases for all the body parts. In addition, the others also had significant relation to MSD cases except one or two body parts. This study found that Korean hospital workers had MSD symptoms mainly in the shoulder, low back and legs in order, which was different from those in North America or Europe. This study provides another evidenc that subjective physical exertion perceived by workers is an important factor to explain MSD cases as same as the objective one.