Inter-rater reliability of PATH observations for assessment of ergonomic risk factors in hospital work

Details

• Personal Author:
  Boyer J ; Casey J ; Gore R ; Park J-K ; Punnett, Laura ; Schemm L ; Tessler J
• Corporate Authors:
  Promoting Healthy and Safe Employment (PHASE) in Healthcare
• Description:
  This study examined the inter-rater reliability of expert observations of ergonomic risk factors by four analysts. Ten jobs were observed at a hospital using a newly expanded version of the PATH method (Buchholz et al. 1996), to which selected upper extremity exposures had been added. Two of the four raters simultaneously observed each worker onsite for a total of 443 observation pairs containing 18 categorical exposure items each. For most exposure items, kappa coefficients were 0.4 or higher. For some items, agreement was higher both for the jobs with less rapid hand activity and for the analysts with a higher level of ergonomic job analysis experience. These upper extremity exposures could be characterised reliably with real-time observation, given adequate experience and training of the observers. The revised version of PATH is applicable to the analysis of jobs where upper extremity musculoskeletal strain is of concern. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Biomechanical Phenomena Delivery Of Health Care Ergonomics Eye Health Care Facilities Workforce And Services Health Personnel Musculoskeletal Diseases Musculoskeletal System Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety Sense Organs Staff Development

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• Keywords:
  Analytical-processes Author Keywords: Inter-rater Reliability Biomechanics Body-mechanics Body-regions Employee-exposure Ergonomic Risk Factor Extremities Health-care Health-care-facilities Health-care-personnel Hospital Work Job-analysis Medical-care Medical-facilities Musculoskeletal-system-disorders PATH Method Risk-analysis Risk-factors Task-performance Training Visual-perception Work-analysis

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• ISSN:
  0014-0139
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Massachusetts ; OSHA Region 1
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  52
• Issue:
  7
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20041917
• Citation:
  Ergonomics 2009 Jul; 52(7):820-829
• Contact Point Address:
  Jung-Keun Park, Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency , Incheon, South Korea; Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts - Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA
• Email:
  nj6689@yahoo.com
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2009
• Performing Organization:
  University of Massachusetts - Lowell
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20000930
• Source Full Name:
  Ergonomics
• End Date:
  20060929
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:4c5d21fba72deb1ffe4304dd46986dc225cd7a9fb37ce66291ec8db70d45afbb075000f9b58b8411b669dd633e7e8484c022fc106c7313ab3928e638e760e651
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/194333/cdc_194333_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 152.82 KB ]