Fatigue-related accomodations to lifting coordination patterns

手动材料处理（MMH）和起重活动是许多工业和医疗保健环境中的主要工作任务（即，患者转移）。目前长期开展这些活动的工作实践是以人体工程学以及健康和安全评估工具和准则为指导的，这些工具和准则是基于生理人为因素的限制。有令人信服的证据表明，长时间和重复接触处理甚至次最大负荷的影响可能对工人的安全产生不利影响。然而，我们并不清楚工人在经历肌肉疲劳时对他们的工作技术所做的调整。我们的研究已经证明了肌肉疲劳和力量恢复的影响时，工人受到重复的次最大工作量，同时进行矢状面限制提升活动。我们还发现了那些后来在工作中出现腰痛的个体在协调运动模式上的差异。拟议的研究将调查的修改上半身和躯干的肌肉和关节运动的协调和相应的影响关节负荷模式与执行复杂的，疲劳的MMH工作任务，旨在确定工人的安全问题。通过了解疲劳对男性和女性工作技术的影响，本研究可以更好地指导MMH工作中的最佳工作实践，工作效率和工人安全。

Manual material handling (MMH) and lifting activities are predominant work tasks in many industrial and health care settings (ie. patient transfer). Current work practices for conducting these activities over a prolonged period are guided by ergonomic and health and safety assessment tools and guidelines that are based on physiological human factors limitations. There is compelling evidence that the effects of prolonged and repetitive exposure to handling even submaximal loads may have an adverse effect on worker safety. However, we do not clearly understand the accommodations workers make to their work techniques when experiencing muscle fatigue. Our research has demonstrated the effects on muscle fatigue and strength recovery when workers are subjected to repeated submaximal workloads while performing sagittal constrained lifting activities. We have also identified differences in coordinated movement patterns in individuals who later developed low back pain at work. The proposed research will investigate the modifications to the upper body and trunk in terms of both muscular and joint motion coordination and their corresponding effect on joint loading patterns associated with performing complex, fatiguing MMH work tasks with an aim to identify worker safety concerns. By understanding fatigue-related influences on work technique in men and women, this research can better guide best work practices, work productivity and worker safety in MMH work.