As you are pushing someone in a wheelchair, there is a high possibility that you will be hurting your back without knowing it.
A research that was conducted at The Ohio State University Spine Research Institute tested measured forces applied upon the spine when pushing a wheelchair and identified that people are not good when it comes to knowing when it is the right time to stop applying more force that can hurt their backs.
The research involved volunteers who were required to push a simulated wheelchair over increased resistance where the participants exceeded the required limits needed to prevent back injury. They exceeded the limit by an average of 20 percent before stopping.
According to Dr. William Marras, a director of the Institute and a chaired Professor of Honda Integrated Systems Engineering at Ohio State, he stated that, there is no predefined ergonomic standard that guides the pushing of wheelchairs. Caregivers judge if they can still push a patient depending on how their backs feel. However, with an increase in weight due to obesity, patients get heavier and harder to push around in wheelchairs.
Dr. Marras goes on to say that, handling patients is one of the most dangerous jobs out there as it risks the health of your back. It is more dangerous as compared to working in construction or mining or any other similar jobs.
Dr. Marras stated that they had studied the risks of lifting patients and how it affects the caregivers, as until that particular moment, no one had ever performed any serious biometrical assessment regarding what happens when someone pushes a patient in a wheelchair.
For over a decade, there has been an increase in weight of average patients. Wheelchairs can now be found in larger sizes so as to accommodate fatter patients. However, the traditional design of the wheelchair is still the same.
Due to the results generated by the study, there are minor design changes that would have helped in transforming wheelchairs making them easier to push, that is what Dr. Marras said. In case the handle height was to be adjusted, for example, if the handles were to be rotated 90 degrees identical to a shopping cart, that would have been a good starting point.
Besides, the team suggested that building a motor-assisted wheelchair that could take over when the person who is pushing the wheelchair exceeds the limit that should not be exceeded so as to prevent back pain.
The study involved 62 volunteers where 31 were men while 31 were women, with an average age of 25 years. Each of them had to push a wheelchair against a rig that was attached to an overhead braking mechanism installed with adjustable resistance.
The rig simulated the average placement as well as the height of the wheelchair handles. Initially, the resistance started as being low, then it was increased gradually until the volunteers felt that they could no longer push the rig any further. During the entire process, the researchers were measuring the forces applied upon the discs of their spine. The extremist loads, which were reached by just a few participants, was equal to pushing patients weighing up to 485 lb.
The volunteers in the study tried to keep pushing and about 17 to 18 percent exceeded the point at which they should have stopped.
When you push against a heavy object, your spine is exposed to compression. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has set the compression limit slightly over 760 pounds of 3,400 Newton force so as to prevent any back injury.
While the volunteers were pushing against the simulated wheelchair, it was noted that the male volunteers pushed and exceeded this limit for about 34 percent.
According to Weston who was part of the team of researchers involved in the research stated that, pushing heavy weight poses a risk to both men and women, but the risk reasons differ between them. Men are capable of pushing loads that are heavy to the extent that they can hurt themselves, while women are quicker to reach a point of quitting.
Besides, the researcher noted that turning a wheelchair is difficult as compared to pushing it in a straight line.
This was identified during the research as turning the wheelchair led to a 40 percent increase of the spinal forces as the volunteers were forced to stabilize their backs by using their core muscles while they were pushing with a single hand and pulling with the other.
This is the first time that researchers had worked to measure the biomechanical loads over different varieties of wheelchair pushing forces or loads of biomechanical that take place during the turning of the wheelchair.
There was a small study that was conducted back in 1995 in Netherland, where volunteers pushed a chair that had a fixed weight up an incline.
Dr. Marras stated that looking at the part of the back, they were so concerned about the disk has it has fewer nerve endings and this makes it hard to determine whether you are damaging it or not. That is the reason they conducted the research.
The study confirmed that people do not feel uncomfortable even when they exceed the actual limits which are set for preventing injury for about 20 percent.
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