UCSF

PSYCHOSOCIAL WORK FACTORS AND SHOULDER PAIN

IN HOTEL ROOM CLEANERS

Barbara J. Burgel

Aims: To measure, among hotel room cleaners, the relationship between psychosocial work factors (job strain, iso-strain, and effort-reward imbalance [ERI]) and severe shoulder pain, controlling for selected socio-demographic, behavioral, anthropometric, biomechanical, and hotel factors.

Background: Hotel room cleaners have physically demanding jobs that place them at high risk for work-related shoulder pain (WRSP). Biomechanical factors have been associated with WRSP. Psychosocial work factors, including job strain (high psychological demand with low decision latitude), iso-strain (job strain with low coworker and supervisor support), and ERI (high effort with low rewards), may also play a role in WRSP, but this is not well studied.

Methods: 941 of 1,276 (74%) hotel room cleaners from 5 hotels in Las Vegas completed a survey in 2002. Of them, 493 with complete data for the shoulder pain outcome, the 3 key psychosocial independent variables, and 17 covariates were included in logistic analyses using Stata, Version 9.2.

Results: Fifty-six percent (n=274) reported WRSP in the prior 4-weeks. The sample was female (98%), Latina (78%), married/partnered (69%), born outside the USA (85%), and age 41 (SD 9.67). On average, participants had worked as a room cleaner 7.74 (SD 5.41) years, 40.26 hours (SD 11.00) per week, and made 19.35 beds/day (SD 6.72). In fully adjusted models, job strain and iso-strain were not associated with WRSP. However, ERI was significantly associated with WRSP: those with an ERI score greater than 1.0 had 3 times the odds of reporting severe shoulder pain, after adjusting for age, years of education, caregiving at home, current smoking and alcohol, height, number of years worked as a room cleaner, number of hours worked/week, number of beds made/day, and physical workload, work intensification and ergonomic indices (AOR 2.98, 95% CI 1.93-4.59, p=0.000).

Implications for nursing: These findings will aid occupational health professionals in developing "healthy work" policies to prevent WRSP. Creative job design and an enhanced reward system for hotel room cleaners may help to achieve a better balance between effort and rewards of work.