Analysis of physical and physiological workloads of nursing in the surgical center

Operating room nursing professionals are exposed to different workload. It is necessary to recognize which situations resulting from their tasks interfere with the health of the professional.

We aimed to identify the physical and physiological loads on operating room nurses and their impact on the health as well as trace ergonomic recommendations based on the literature and performed analysis.

The is an exploratory, observational, descriptive research conducted in the surgical center of a university hospital between August 2017 and July 2018. Nursing staff of both genders who worked as transport professionals or room circulators were included in the study. Data collection in the OR went through stages of Ergonomic Workplace Analysis (EWA), through semi-structured interviews addressing the physical and physiological work issues and a worksheet of data collected from the observations of the practitioners' actions.

The study included 20 nursing workers of both genders with an average of 17.33±12.58 years of work experience. The most reported problematic factors were: lack of material, staff pressure, patient transporting, employment legal status with the institution, and lack of communication among the practitioners.

There was a physical effort during the activity and a high prevalence of workers with pain complaints, which justifies the investigation.