Introduction: Musculoskeletal injuries have an enormous, growing impact on the world for being the main cause of pain and disability due to muscle overload at work.
Aim: To determine the ergonomic risk produced by the postural load to which the target population is
exposed.
Method: Cross-sectional descriptive observational study. A convenience sample of 15 people, students of the Oral Health Assistance Program at a university in southwestern Colombia, was drawn; we conducted a sociodemographic survey, a workstation analysis, and the Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (rula) method, whose methodology divides the body into two groups: Group A, including the upper limbs (arms, forearms and wrists), and group B, comprising legs, trunk and neck. For this, two simultaneous film records were kept when each participant performed the dental prophylaxis procedure.
Results: The information collected allowed to identify the most physically demanding steps and the musculoskeletal system disorders produced by the postural load to which the population is exposed in performing the procedure, and allowed to identify the specific body segments compromised and the degree of compromise.
Conclusions: There is an ergonomic risk in oral health assistance students, since they are at an action level of
4. This means that the task of “performing the prophylaxis procedure” requires urgent changes
due to the exposure to biomechanical risk factors that may cause health disorders, especially in
the musculoskeletal system.
Keywords:
human engineering, occupational medicine, occupational hazards, dental prophylaxis, postural overload
