A1358 Psychosocial work factors and low back pain in taxi drivers

Wednesday, March 21, 2012: 14:35
Xcaret 4 (Cancun Center)
Barbara Jean Burgel, Department of Community Health Systems, University Of California, San Francisco School Of Nursing, San Francisco, United States
Mary C. White, Department of Community Health Systems, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
Marion Gillen, School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, United States
Introduction
Taxi drivers are at high risk for musculoskeletal disorders due to prolonged sitting, whole body vibration, and baggage handling. Psychosocial work factors, including perceptions of unfair treatment, jobstrain, and effort-reward imbalance, may contribute to work-related musculoskeletal disorders in taxi drivers, but this has not been studied. This study aimed to a) measure the prevalence of these psychosocial work factors; b) measure the 12-month prevalence of lower back pain (LBP), and c) determine the associations between selected psychosocial work factors and LBP, after controlling for socio-demographic, behavioral, and work factors.

Methods
This was a cross-sectional study with personal interviews conducted in English with 130 San Francisco taxi drivers.

Results
130 drivers participated, representing 11 taxi companies. The sample was male (94%), age 45 (sd 11 years), married (54%), born outside of the USA (55%), with 24% reporting that Arabic was the primary language spoken at home. 18% reported their health as poor or fair; 36% reported current smoking, 33% reported no physical activity, with 25% of the sample with a BMI greater than 30. 58% reported no health insurance. Years of driving averaged 9.8 years (sd 8.4 years); hours worked were 40.9 hours/week (sd 13.0 hours). 52% drove at night. 63% reported LBP in the prior 12 months. Many psychosocial work factors were significantly associated with LBP prevalence in bivariate analyses. However, only lower dispatcher support maintained significant associations with 12-month prevalence of LBP (p=0.002), after adjusting for age, education, BMI, depression, number of hours worked, mental exertion, physical exertion, and number of airport runs.

Discussion
Findings add to the limited research on psychosocial work factors and LBP in taxi drivers. Greater understanding of psychosocial work factors will aid in the development of intervention studies to improve the quality of work life for an urban population of taxi drivers.

See more of: Psychosocial factors and MSDs: Cause effect interventions
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