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Abstract
An advanced technology has been efficiently applied into the healthcare sector to assess the forces acting on the lumbar spine of nurses during their daily patient transfer activities. The real-time ergonomics outputs from full-body dynamic simulation can be easily evaluated via integrating the Xsens wearable motion tracking system with JACK Siemens PLM software. It greatly reduces the time taken in traditionally dynamic simulation via manually setting the DHM postures. In this study, totally 33 participants were required to complete the pulling effort on a patient manikin at different heights. We successfully revealed that the exposed forces acting on the lumbar spine were directly affected by the postures adopted by participants. This study will provide a new opportunity for ergonomists to assess the injury risk of nurses and provide robust ergonomics analysis for the development of injury prevention program and the better design of assistive devices.
Key words: injury evaluation, healthcare, digital human model, JACK Siemens, Xsens
1.Introduction
Nurses perform strenuous tasks when moving and lifting patients, subjecting them to a high injury rate [1]. Only in 2016, 19,790 nonfatal injuries were reported, of which 45.6% were due to excessive and repetitive lifting, bending, and twisting [1]. Out of 44,020 injury cases to the nursing and residential care facilities, approximately 36% of the involved musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), resulted in at least 10 days away from work [2]. MSDs led to shortstaffed hospitals, decreased patients' standard of care, and possible compensation to the injured nurses. Over a sixyear period, the 9,401 patient handling claims to the skilled nursing facilities made up 34.4% of the medical costs for over $29 million [3]. The high injury rate results in low employee morale and high turnover rates.
Even though the factors inducing MSDs in nurses are well established, only a few studies showed evidence of appropriate interventions to avoid injuries [4]. Training programs are an efficient way to prevent injuries. Videman [5] indicated that 8% of back injury was decreased in the training group compared with the control group in patient handling activities. Nelson [6] showed that training could significantly reduce both the externally applied force (48%) and the erector spinae 's muscle activity (25%) during a patient transfer task. Although these studies provided effective methods to prevent...