[Self-perceived work disability in a school of children with special needs]

Increased psychosocial and physical demands of the Special Education Centers (SEC) workers can also lead to intense involvement, triggering stressful and to trigger stress situations and potentially work disability. The objective of this study was to assess the self-perceived occupational disability and its relation with socio-demographic, occupational and health variables with in a sample of this these workers.

Cross-sectional study with of 40 SEC workers of in Murcia (Spain) (n = 40). The Spanish WRFQ version was used to measure self-perceived work ability. A structured self-administered questionnaire was used for to collect sociodemographic, occupational, and health variables. A descriptive analysis of the studied variables was performed. Differences between groups were studied using the Mann-Whitney U test, Student's T test and Kruskal-Wallis test.

The mean age of the sample was 40.15 ± 10.53 years; 82.5% were women, 60% were computer users and 92.50% were directly attending children. The subscales of production requirements and physical demands had the worst results. Workers <40 years presented lower scores in for the time management subscales (p = 0.002) and production requirements (p = 0.01); computer users in time management (p <0.001), production requirements (p <0.001) and psychological requirements (p = 0.005); as well as among those working as managers and healthcare employeesthe employment status of executive and sanitary.

The level of self-perceived occupational disability is was low in this collective, with the subscales of production requirements and physical requirements being the worst evaluated. The working conditions related to a higher degree of self-perceived occupational disability are were the use of of a computer, the employment status and the manual materials handling.