Musculoskeletal Problems in Healthcare Professionals

Running head: MUSCULOSKELETAL PROBLEMS
1
Musculoskeletal problems
Name
Institutional Affiliation

MUSCULOSKELETAL PROBLEMS 2
Introduction
Evidence on the Topic
Musculoskeletal disorders refer to problems affecting the joints, bones and muscles.
Musculoskeletal disorders are extremely prevalent and affect 50% of adults in the United
States, which adds up to around 126 million individuals (Campbell, 2017). A
musculoskeletal disorders one of the rapidly increasing problems in occupational health. The
conditions are highly prevalent among workers who perform duties such as heavy lifting,
excessively repetitive tasks and activities performed in awkward posters. The World Health
Organization (WHO) and International Labour Organization (ILO) regard musculoskeletal
classifies musculoskeletal disorders as a work-related problem (Luan et al., 2018).
Musculoskeletal disorders are prevalent among healthcare professionals. Koyuncu
and Karcioglu (2018) conducted a prospective cross-sectional study among healthcare
professionals in a community training hospital with a capacity of 700 beds. The study
included 216 health care workers within healthcare sectors. The findings indicated that 173
workers (79.7%) reported musculoskeletal conditions. Female workers reported a higher
prevalence that males. The quality work life was higher among workers with no incidence of
musculoskeletal conditions. The evidence demonstrated the high prevalence of
musculoskeletal problems among healthcare professionals.
Motivation of the Review
Researchers have paid adequate attention to the issue of musculoskeletal problems in
the healthcare sector. However, most of the identified studies are cross-sectional studies.
Therefore, there is need for a systematic review to provide an overview of evidence and
achieve a general view of different researchers regarding musculoskeletal problems.

MUSCULOSKELETAL PROBLEMS 3
Methods
Search Strategy
Data Sources. The researcher selected the articles from six databases, including
Medline, EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar. The
selected articles focused on musculoskeletal problems with a bias on the health sector. All
the identified articles were relevant to musculoskeletal problems. The researcher searched
articles published in the English language between 2015 and 2019.
Search terms. The main search terms used to select articles included
“musculoskeletal”, “problems”, and “healthcare”, “professionals”. The resarcher combined
the search terms to form search phrases such as “healthcare professionals” and
“musculoskeletal problems”, “musculoskeletal disorder”. Other complementary searches
included “healthcare sector”, “work-related” and “work-related musculoskeletal problems”.
The identified articles were then reviewed to establish their eligibility for the study.
Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria
The first step was to select journals published in English language that were less than
five years (2014 to 2019). The researcher excluded articles published in a different language
other than English from the study. The mentioned search terms helped to identify studies
related to musculoskeletal problems. The articles that had titles mentioning musculoskeletal
problems, healthcare professionals, and work-related musculoskeletal problems were
searched. The researcher excluded articles related to other sectors other than the healthcare
sector from the study. In the initial search, a total of 86 articles were identified (n=86). A
total of 59 (n=59) articles were included in the study following an exclusion of duplicates,
amounting to 17 articles. Duplicates meant that an article appears more than once among the
eligible articles. The identified articles were then reviewed to establish their eligible
appearing more in more than one database. The next step involved examining the abstracts

Journals published in English language that
were less than five years (2014 to 2019)
(n=86)
Articles included in the study (n=59)
17 duplicates
excluded
Articles that discussed musculoskeletal
problems among healthcare professionals
only (n=31)
Exclusion of 28 articles
that did not focus on
musculoskeletal problems
among healthcare
professionals
Inclusion of 23 (n=23) articles
Exclusion of 8 articles
after full screening of
articles
10 studies included in the final study (n=10)
Exclusion due to other reasons such
as lack of comprehensive evidence,
methodology used and the nature of
the study
MUSCULOSKELETAL PROBLEMS 4
of the remaining articles to establish their relevance to the study. At this stage, the inclusion
criteria were that the articles must focus on musculoskeletal problems among healthcare
professionals. The researcher excluded articles that discussed other stakeholders apart from
healthcare professionals from the study. The exclusion yielded 31 (n=31) articles.
Further, the full texts were reviewed to assess their relevance. The researcher included a
total of 23 (n=23) articles in the study following the exclusion of irrelevant articles. The
researcher then screened the 23 articles eligible for the study and excluded 13 articles for
various reasons such as lack of extensive evidence, the methodology used, and the nature of
the study. The total number s articles reviewed was10 (n=10) articles. Appendix A
demonstrates the summary of eligible studies. The flow chart diagram below demonstrates
the literature search process.