Hello Syed,

You can. But more important is a purpose of the study, what you want achieve What you want find out? And so on.

Kind regards

Andrzej

we want to know the prevalence of MSDs and the amount of risk in different body parts.

Hello,

You can measure MSDs by use one of questionnaires such as Cornell, NIOSH, Standardized Nordic Questionnaires. To assess the risk you can use one of mentioned methods.

The RULA will be more precision than OWAS . But dentists’ job included some tasks and I suggest evaluate risk connected which each task. Or use this method as a sampling

Kind regard

Andrzej

thanks Andrzej,

to start with i have used the Standardized Nordic Questionnaire to measure the MSDs.

As you said , to assess the risk, i had planned to use RULA, but i thought why not OWAS alongwith RULA.

I may get to compare the quantum of risk levels given by both the tools or i can also use REBA in some cases.

Hello,

Yes, you are right. You can compare results achieved from these methods.

Hi,

Definitely you can use OWAS Posture analysis and compared with RULA and REBA for your study. For more details you can refer the following paper

1. Working postures of dental students: ergonomic analysis using the Ovako Working Analysis System and rapid upper limb assessment. Petromilli Nordi Sasso Garcia P, Polli GS, Campos JA.

2.Analyzing dentists’ body movement during work using two methods of REBA and OWAS DOI: 10.5176/2251-2489_ BioTech14.09 ,Authors: Mojtaba Javidi, Misagh Naderi

Hope this will help you!

Hello Thaneswer,

Thanks for your suggestions.

If you have a copy of the papers, can u mail me.

At our institute we do not have access to the above papers.

my mail id is: [email protected]

hope to get an reply.

Dear Syed,

Sorry I don't have access of those papers here. I would suggest you to email to the concerned author for full paper.

The real issue her is that most ergonomic research, particularly postural research has been related to heavy industry.  As dentists we are not typically lifting heavy weights over our heads.  That being said, The question becomes do we want to ask people about their postural habits or do we observe them.  The Nordic Questionnaire is one of the standards to look at in just asking.  The REBA and RULA, at least for me, don't address the postural issues that occur in dentistry very well.  The Baseline Risk Identification of Ergonomic Factors (BRIEF) as described in Applied Industrial Ergonomics  by Humantech , seems to be more suited, but even that has it's limitations.  Another question becomes the period of time over which the subject is observed (if it is an observational study), and how or if it is recorded.  Remember, above all, that none of these have been directly correlated with MSD's.

Dear Qutubddin You can use WAS  which is the original technique of posture analysis. Now RULA & REBA is developed more accurate and less time consuming then why WAS? pcg,Chennai

Yes, you can.

RULA is a tool to evaluate the physical stress body suffers due to awkward posture in the upper part. For whole-body uses the REBA tool. Another tool I like a lot is the 3D Static Strength Prediction Program (3DSSPP).

yes you can use OWAS cumbersome time consuming & difficult, whereas RULA &REBA is simple easy reliable,