Perception of musculoskeletal symptoms and psychosocial risk factors among a sample of Portuguese emergency medical technicians

Abstract

Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT’s) deal with a wide variety of situations, having frequently to perform their tasks in a fast pace of work and under pressure, making their job highly demanding, both on a physical and emotional level. This paper focuses on analysing the perception of musculoskeletal symptoms among these professionals, based on the socio-demographic characteristics and psychosocial risk factors. This study was built on a cross-sectional questionnaire that comprised socio-demographic characteristics, the Portuguese Medium Version of Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire II (COPSOQ II) and The Portuguese version of the standardized Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ). The sample included 51 Emergency Medical Technicians from the Portuguese National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM). The average age of the sample was 35.7 years and 70.6% were male professionals. The presence of musculoskeletal symptoms was higher in the low back region, followed by the upper back and shoulders. There were found statistical differences, at least in one section, in 16 of the 22 analysed scales, mainly in the shoulders, neck and upper back sections, which might reveal an association between work-related musculoskeletal symptoms and psychosocial risk factors in these cases. Investing in the improvement of the psychosocial work environment it’s a necessary action to the prevention of work-related musculoskeletal symptoms.