Study of the effect individual, occupational and environmental factors on return to work (RTW ) among office workers with Low back pain in one of the oil company in southern part of Iran.

Abstract

Introduction: low back pain is one of the prevalent musculoskeletal disorders among working population including office workers. In this regard, various factors are important for low back pain reduction and return to work. The aim of this study was to investigate factors influencing return to work among employees with low back pain.

Methods: About 303 administrative employees participated in this study from an oil company located in southern part of Iran in 1394. The study variables were a 4-part questionnaire including demographic, job related variables and information about low back pain and the interventions implemented for return work.

Results: The majority of participants were male 35-47 years old, bachelor degrees. With 9-25 years job tenure. Most of the employees had medium to high mental, physical, and temporal demands. From 303 participants, about 85(28/1) had low back pain. The main cause of low back pain was mostly muscular spasm (52/9) and the physiotherapy was the most treatment method (51/8). About 91% of participants had individual intervention like changing the life style. About 88/2 of them had job interventions as body posture correction. Furthermore, 62/4 had organizational interventions as teamwork development. The age, physical activity, and the type of treatment showed significant relationship with return to work. Also, the individual, occupational, and organizational interventions had a significant relationship with RTW.

Conclusion: The ability to return to work was seen mostly among the individuals with less physical activities in their working practices. Also, physiotherapy played better role in a rapid return to work comparing to other treatments. The individual interventions showed high impact on RTW. The issues such as individual interventions including change in lifestyle as well as doing particular exercises, job interventions including change in working stations, change in physical status during work and organizational interventions including special routine examinations, performing teamwork as well as particular training classes had played great impacts on RTW.