A CHECKLIST AS A METHOD FOR ASSESSING CONDITIONS OF WORK WITH COMPUTERS ― IMPLEMENTATION OF DIRECTIVE 270/90/EEC IN POLAND

摘要

Implementation of Council Directive 90/270/EEC on the minimum safety and health requirements for work with display screen equipment into Polish regulations as the Ordinance of the Minister of Labour and Social Policy resulted in many problems. The main problems were connected with the obligation to carry out visual, musculoskeletal load and mental stress assessment of workers on VDT stands. The methods of evaluating those loads are based on particular measurements like emg or eye measurements or specific questionnaire methods, which can be done only by experts. Taking into account the number of VDT users, a group of experts prepared a new checklist (Wolska et al., 2000a), which had to be easy to use and well understood by safety officers and other specialists. The structure of the checklist contains possible problems and questions or observations connected with them, and finally suggestions of possible improvement activities. Additionally references to relevant technical standards and/of regulations are provided. Wanting to meet users' expectations, the first version of the checklist was verified by a group of safety officers from different institutions in Poland. The current version was improved on the basis of their notes and suggestions. The same group of safety officers assessed VDT stands with this verified checklist (Wolska et al., 2000a). The results of the carried out assessment of VDT workstations with the new checklist (Wolska et al., 2000a) showed that this new tool for ergonomic evaluation is useful for non-experts. VDT users' participation during the assessment process raises their understanding and acceptance of possible changes at their workstations. However the evaluation of VDT workstations with the new checklist revealed some problems, which are still the subject of dissatisfaction, like abandonment of carrying out the questionnaire to identify and collect information about different complaints of VDT workers and mental stress. Because the additional collecting of reported complaints of VDT users is very important from the ergonomic point of view, it is necessary to prepare some examples of a simple questionnaire, which would be distributed together with the checklist.