Ergonomic height adjustment device for hospital bed to prevent low back pain in Thai nurses

Patient manual handling in bed causes low back pain among Thai nurses. This study aimed to develop ergonomic height adjustment device for hospital bed, and to evaluate its efficiency in order to prevent low back pain in Thai nurses. 11 participants were employed for EMG measurement in eight right muscles. Subsequently, 56 voluntary nurses were recruited by convenience sampling for the observational risk assessment by REBA and satisfaction evaluation. The characteristics of the participants, %MVC of each muscle, REBA scores, and satisfaction were analyzed by descriptive statistics, MANOVA, One-way ANOVA, paired t-test, and Wilcoxon signed ranks test, respectively. The %MVC of the six muscles i.e. biceps brachii, deltoideus, trapezius, latissimus dorsi, erector spinae, and hamstring muscle were found decrease 4 – 18%. The average REBA scores were decreased in both the left and the right when using ergonomic height adjustment device, and all participants had more satisfaction to the ergonomic height adjustment device than the hand crank of hospital bed. The use of the ergonomic height adjustment device for hospital bed developed from this study will help to prevent low back pain in health care setting.