Identification of Chronic Low-Back Pain Preventive Methods for Graphic Designers

Abstract

Low-back pain is prevalent among office workers who have to use computers to perform their work. Graphic designers, in particular, are vulnerable to have the low-back pain. This is because, by the nature of their work, they have to sit in their chair working from their computer continuously for 8 hours in one working day. The objectives of this research are 1) To identify the behavior which causes chronic low-back pain of office workers 2) To propose a chronic low-back pain exercise conceptual framework at work. Graphic designers of a Japanese company in Bangkok will be the unit of study. This company employed 28 graphic designers to draft house design for customers in Japan. All these 28 graphic designers, the universe of the units of study, will be included in the study. The questionnaires concerning preliminary data of low-back pain based on Cornell Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaires-CMDQ) were constructed and applied to all 28 graphic designers. From the answer it is found that 10 of 28 graphic designers (35.71%) suffered from low-back pain. All other answers will be used for later analysis. Then the following steps will be taken: 1) Systematic review to extract relevant articles for low-back pain prevention and treatment 2) Design thinking to propose the prevention and treatment method for the low-back pain 3) Community of Practice to consulting physical therapy specialists concerning the proposed preventive methods. Then a manual of low back pain prevention will be created and distribute to all 10 graphic designers. 4) After Action Review to methodically evaluate the effect of knowing the low-back pain preventive methods. In this step, one month after the manual distribution, the second set of questionnaires will be sent to all 10 units of study. There will also be online conferences of the researcher, graphic designers, and physical therapy specialists to evaluate the effect of knowing and applying the low-back pain preventive methods. Then the final manual of proposed low-back pain preventive methods will be constructed infographic. This will be the result or the output of this research.