Faculty Mentor(s)
Dr. Brooke Odle, Engineering
Document Type
Poster
Event Date
4-12-2024
Abstract
Musculoskeletal injury to the lower lumbar vertebrae is among high prevalence in nursing personnel. Currently, lumbar rotation during patient-handling tasks (PHT) is not widely studied. This work specifically investigated lumbar rotation in asymmetric PHT tasks—tasks where the arms or shoulders are used to reach to different parts of a patient, causing the trunk to rotate. In addition, task performance was also analyzed with respect to patient weight. A pilot study was completed with 5 able-bodied volunteers without PHT experience. Three tasks were analyzed: sliding a patient towards the head of the bed using a sling (2-slide), lifting a patient’s leg up to vertical (leg-lift), and sitting a patient up in bed (situp). For consistency within and across participants, manikins were used as patients. To analyze how lumbar rotation changes during specific PHT, each task was completed at three different table heights (knee, mid-thigh, and hip height) and with three manikin weights (44lb, 66lb, 110lb). For the 2-slide and leg-lift trials, as the table height decreased, lumbar rotation angles increased, which was expected because as the table lowers, the subject must reach further down. In these movements, no trend was detected between manikin weight and joint angles. For the situp trials, no trends were observed between joint angle and table height. When looking at the relationship between manikin weight and joint angles for the situp trials, lumbar rotation angles increased as the manikin weight increased, but this was the only trend seen between manikin weight and joint angles for this task. Although no major trends were observed in this small sample size, these results show that trunk rotation is present within asymmetrical patient handling tasks and may need to be further explored in future work.
Recommended Citation
Repository citation: Brillinger, Elsa; Song, Yeageon; and Vicente, Regina, "Variation of Lumbar Rotation During Asymmetric Patient Handling Tasks" (2024). 23rd Annual A. Paul and Carol C. Schaap Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2024). Paper 11.
https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/curca_23/11
April 12, 2024. Copyright © 2024 Hope College, Holland, Michigan.
Comments
This work was supported by funding from the RESTORE Center of Stanford University, supported by NICHD of the National Institutes of Health under award number 5P2CHD101913 and by the Clare Boothe Luce Program.