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The purpose of this paper is to develop a brief screening instrument to identify risk factors of factory workers experiencing mass fainting illness (MFI) due to work-environmental determinants.

A factory-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 740 workers in October 2017 and was completed with face-to-face interviews. Data analyses included univariate logistic regression, backward stepwise linear regression and multiple logistic regression. Sum scores on significant items and receiver operator characteristic curves were used to compute potential cut-off points and the sensitivity and specificity rates.

Significant work-environmental factors were identified as working at very high speeds, having less influence on the choice of working partners, perceived high temperature at work, having less opportunity to do their best at work, and concern about losing a job in the next six months. In developing a screening instrument, a 6.5 cut-off point that corresponded to 99.6 percent sensitivity and 92.2 percent specificity was identified.

The study concludes that this MFI-instrument could potentially be used to prevent MFI. By understanding the policy implications, the government body, employers, workers, development partners and stakeholders should work toward preventing MFI. Implementing a preventive measure is therefore warranted due to the health education impact.

The purpose of this paper is to review the prevalence and risk factors of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) among healthcare workers (HCWs) in order to ascertain the occupation with the highest susceptibility to WMSD in the health sector. This paper will also review the effective interventions which have been used to prevent WMSDs among HCWs.

This study is a literature review of 11 papers related to the prevalence and risk factors of WMSDs and 12 papers about the interventions being used to prevent WMSDs among HCWs. The papers were retrieved from respectable databases such as PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar and E-Thesis.

Nurses belong to the major group of HCWs who had the highest prevalence of WMSDs compared with other health professionals and other hospital workers. Although there are several interventions being commonly used to prevent WMSD risk factors, some interventions were unsuccessful in the prevention of WMSDs in healthcare tasks. Therefore, it is necessary that future research focuses on the tasks of HCWs that are WMSD risk factors and tries to innovate or redesign ergonomic workstations to prevent those risk factors.

The expected benefit of this study is to motivate ergonomists to provide appropriate and innovative interventions to ensure health and safety for nurses and other HCWs.