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ABSTRACT: Employees who work at a computer workstation are constantly exposed to ergonomic hazards. These hazards could be avoided or minimized if the employees were
aware of the ergonomic risk factors associated with computer work and
reported the risks to their safety officer, industrial hygienist, or health care provider.
Within the U.S. Army,
there is a much effort to integrate ergonomics into the corporate culture so
that employees can be educated about work-related musculoskeletal risk
factors and ways to avoid injuries. However, the U.S. Army is limited in
the amount of resources it can dedicate solely to ergonomics. To overcome
this problem, trained ergonomists from the U.S. Army Center for Health
Promotion and Preventive Medicine conducted a study to determine the
usefulness of employee self-reporting in assessing the need for workstation
adjustments or changes. In the study, employees used the Department of
Defense Job Requirements and Physical Demands survey form to respond to
questions about job requirements and physical demands. Employees who had
little or no formal ergonomics training and whose workstations had not been
evaluated by an ergonomist did the self-reporting.
To confirm the results of
the self-reporting, the ergonomists performed 94 workstation assessments to
determine the limitations of the workstations and compared their findings to
the employees' self-reporting of pain, discomfort and risk exposure. The
ergonomists standardized their assessments by developing an assessment tool
using evaluation criteria based on the International Standards Organization
(Ergonomic Requirements for Office Work with Video Display Terminals),
American National Standard Institute (American National Standard for Human
Factors Engineering of Computer Workstations) and good ergonomics practice.
The results indicated that
deficiencies in workstation design can be identified via employee
self-reporting of body part pain, discomfort, and risk exposure. In fact,
employees were more likely to recognize workstation limitations and identify
symptoms or seek medical treatment than to inform their immediate supervisor
of their condition. Therefore, self-reporting of job requirements and
physical demands by the employee can be an effective tool in reducing injury
risk, identifying employees at a greater risk for an injury, and
prioritization of workstations in need of remediation. Through employee
self-reporting, the industrial hygienist or safety officer can pinpoint
problems quickly and offer troubleshooting solutions to alleviate pain and
discomfort until a detailed evaluation can take place.
For more information about USACHPPM ergonomic assessments, contact
services@ergoworkinggroup.org |
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