Effects of a Shoulder Harness on Litter Carriage Perforaaance and Post- Carry Fatigue of Men and Women

摘要

The purpose of this study was to determine whether an ergonomically designed harness would improve soldier performance during and after litter carrying. Two litter carrying tasks were used: 1) a simulated mass casualty task; carrying and loading as many patients as possible within 15 mins and 2) a simulated removal from a remote site, carrying the litter at a constant rate of 4.8 km/hr for as long as possible, up to 30 min. Each task used a repeated measures design to determine differences in harness use, team size, and gender. Soldiers (12 men and 11 women) were measured on the following measures: rifle marksmanship, a fine motor task, heart rate and oxygen uptake while litter carrying, time of carry, number of carries, and ratings of perceived exertion. During the mass casualty task, men carried and loaded more patients than women (18 vs. 14 carries), and women reported greater soreness/discomfort than men post-carry. Using a harness resulted in faster fine-motor performance (47.6 vs. 46.1 sec) and lower subjective ratings of physical symptoms than with a hand carry.