조선업 근로자의 근골격계질환 증상과 작업능력에 관한 연구

Abstract

The statistics of industrial accident reported by ministry of Employment and Labor denoted a significant increase of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) after 1993, and showed the higher incident rate by 71.3% over the overall worker’s disorders. Also, it was expected that Korean society will become the post-aged society in 2026 with 20.8% of elderly who is over 65 years old. The reports suggest possible problems caused by the older worker known to have reduced working ability than the young counterparts. On this basis, the goal this study was to investigate the relationship between MSDs symptoms and work ability in Korean population. To achieve this goal, this study distributed a questionnaire for total 1244 ship building employers, and used 910 employers’ reports which revealed validity for this study. The questionnaire included the MSDs symptoms report developed by the Korean Occupational Safety and Health Association (KOSHA) and the work ability index (WAI) developed by Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH). Results showed no relationship between MSDs symptoms and age, years of work and exercise. However, the results revealed significant relationships between WAI and age, years of work, task characteristics and exercise. Also, the work ability was increased until 44 years old, but it was decreased after that time because of the reduced physical capacity. Meanwhile, the years of work and exercise have positive correlation with work ability. All together, the MSDs symptoms have a close relationship with the work ability in that the work ability was reduced with the MSDs symptoms. This study may suggest the needs of more efforts and attention on the MSDs prevention to increase the work ability.