Abstract
In Taiwan, there are 364,000 patients suffering from chronic kidney disease, with over 90% of them requiring haemodialysis to sustain their lives due to kidney function failure. However, the substantial demand for haemodialysis care has often resulted in nurses’ overwork. The nature of their work, which requires high concentration and puts them under constant high pressure for prolonged periods, significantly impacts the physical and psychological well-being of haemodialysis nurses. Despite this, only a limited number of studies have addressed the health problems caused by their work. Therefore, this study attempts to conduct a systematic literature review to investigate and summarise health problems and risk factors related to musculoskeletal disorders caused by the work of haemodialysis nurses. The study conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed and Web of Science databases, eventually including ten articles for discussion. The systematic review covers topics that may contribute to haemodialysis nurses’ health problems and musculoskeletal disorders. Furthermore, the study aims to analyse whether musculoskeletal symptoms among haemodialysis nurses are due to the specific nature of haemodialysis tasks, work intensity, stress, fatigue, and other factors. The research findings indicate that haemodialysis nurses experience significant work-related stress due to their unique responsibilities, labour-intensive and skill-intensive tasks, repetitive nature of their tasks, and improper posture. These factors may lead to musculoskeletal problems, with hand-related musculoskeletal discomfort twice as prevalent in haemodialysis nurses as in other specialities. Musculoskeletal disorders are one of the leading causes of absenteeism among haemodialysis nurses.
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Acknowledgements
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported in part by the National Science and Technology Council under grant number NSTC 112-2410-H-027-017-MY2 and NSTC 111-2410-H-027-021-MY3, by the Ministry of Science and Technology under grant numbers MOST 109-2410-H-027-003-MY2, MOST 108-2410-H-027-024-MY3, and by Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and the National Taipei University of Technology joint research programme under grant number NTUT-CGMH-110-05, NTUT-CGMH-112-02 and CORPG3L0141. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.
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Tsao, YC., Pei, YC., Liu, KF., Tseng, K.C. (2025). Systematic Review on Work-Related Musculoskeletal Health Risks in Haemodialysis Nurses. In: Duffy, V.G. (eds) HCI International 2024 – Late Breaking Papers. HCII 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15376. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76809-5_22
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