ABSTRACTS

Musculoskeletal disorders are common and represent an important occupational health problems in the workforce.There have been studies conducted on the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain, work posture, job satisfactionand employee productivity among academic staff. However, there is scarce evidence on the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and its association with quality of work life. The aim of this study was to determine the association between the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and quality of work life of teaching staff in University of Benin.

 This cross-sectional study was conducted among teaching staff with College of Medical Science, University of Benin, Benin city, Nigeria. Instruments used were adapted version of both Walton’s 35- item questionnaire and Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ), distributed to 174 teaching staff using convenience sampling technique. Descriptive and inferential statistics of Chi square were used to summarise the data. Alpha level was 0.05.

They were mostly male (60.9%) and married (92%) with the mean age of 46.64 ± 7.72years  and the mean experience of 17.03 ± 7.53 years. Most of them (79.3%) had moderate level of QWL and 85.1% has musculoskeletal pain or discomfort in at least one part of their body.  Low back pain was the most prevalent musculoskeletal disorder (33.3%) in this study and elbow pain was the least prevalent musculoskeletal symptom (10.3%). “Social relevance and importance to work” and “Opportunities to growth and security” had the highest and lowest scores respectively. There was a significant association between 7-days prevalence of low back pain and QWL (ρ = 0.007) but there was no significant association between prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and academic rank, academic rank and quality of work life.

Keywords: Musculoskeletal disorder, Quality of work life, teachers, prevalence