Study of caregiver’s waist movement comparison between expert and non-expert during transfer care

Abstract

As well know that caregivers employed in elderly nursing home suffer from low-back injuries/pain at a terrible rate worldwide, however there is little studies focusing on visual analysis of care works difference conducted by expert and non-expert caregivers. In current study, a ‘hypothesis’ elder was employed in both expert and non-expert caregiver’s handling tasks. And two caregivers with different experience years were selected as subjects named as expert and non-expert, which were required to perform transfer care process for the same elder object. With three-dimensional motion analysis, non-expert’s back pain cause was explained by waist up-down and horizontal plane movement, waist roundness, lower back bend angle and waist joint angle comparison to expert performance quantitatively. As a result, it could be concluded that expert kept straight upper body and stable waist motion in a smaller range during transfer care process which was considered as effective waist movement for back pain prevention in intensive heavy care works.