La Trobe

A participatory ergonomics intervention to re-design work and improve the musculoskeletal health of paramedics: protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial

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posted on 2023-11-14, 04:10 authored by Karen Nicole DaviesKaren Nicole Davies, Victoria WealeVictoria Weale, Jodi OakmanJodi Oakman
Background: In this paper, we present the protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of a participative risk management intervention to address work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). The aims of the study include to evaluate the implementation process and the impact of the intervention on work related musculoskeletal pain and discomfort and exposure to physical and psychosocial hazards in paramedics over a 12-month period. Methods: The intervention in this study is to implement A Participative Hazard Identification and Risk Management (APHIRM) toolkit in an ambulance service. Eighteen work groups containing eligible participants (registered paramedics) will be randomised into the intervention or wait-list control arm in one of three rolling recruitment periods. The APHIRM toolkit survey will be offered at baseline and 12 months later, to all current eligible participants in each work group allocated to the trial. The intervention work groups will receive the remainder of the APHIRM toolkit procedures. Identifying data about individual participants will not be collected in the survey, to protect participant privacy and encourage participation. Changes in primary (musculoskeletal pain and discomfort) and secondary (exposure to physical and psychosocial hazards at work) outcomes measured in the survey will be analysed comparing the baseline and follow up response of the cluster. A process evaluation is included to analyse the implementation and associated barriers or facilitators. Discussion: This study is important in providing a comprehensive approach which focusses on both physical and psychosocial hazards using worker participation, to address WMSDs, a well-known and significant problem for ambulance services. The effectiveness of the intervention in work groups will be rigorously evaluated. If significant positive results are observed, the intervention may be adopted in ambulance services, both nationally and internationally. Trial registration: ISRCTN77150219. Registered 21 November 2021.

Funding

The Queensland Ambulance Service provided in-kind funding, as the corresponding author conducted the planning for the study while a paid employee of the service.

History

Publication Date

2023-09-08

Journal

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Volume

24

Article Number

716

Pagination

14p.

Publisher

Springer Nature

ISSN

1471-2474

Rights Statement

© The Author(s) 2022. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.