Comparisons of Three Observational Ergonomic Tools for Risk Assessment on Upper Extremities in a Pump Assembly Plant - A Pilot Study

摘要

The purpose of this study was to compare the agreement of three risk assessment tools for WMSDs, KIM-MHO, OCRA Index, and RSI, on upper extremities. Three raters were recruited to evaluate the risks of 30 repetitive pump assembly jobs based on job characteristics. The highest intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of risk scores was 0.6 (95% CI: 0.39-0.76) when using OCRA Index. Pearson's Correlation coefficient on the averaged risk score between KIM-MHO and RSI was high (r = 0.893, p < 0.01). The highest weighted-kappa coefficient of risk category between KIM-MHO and OCRA index was 0.21, which was a little low. The possible reason may be the definition of "risk" and the cut-off values used by each assessment tools. In conclusion, KIM-MHO is a recommended screen tool to assess the WMSDs risk on the upper extremities because of easy to use and less time consuming.