Journal of Preventive Medicine

Introduction: Subjective workload is a general concept in ergonomics literature, defined as the costs to the operator's health to achieve a certain level of performance. On the other hand early withdrawal of workers from work has increased the problems of today's industries. In this regard Promotion of workers ability is one of the most effective ways to prevent the disability. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between work ability and mental work load with musculoskeletal disorders among workers in a steel industry.

Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on 300 workers from various occupational groups in a steel industry. The Persian version of NASA-TLX questionnaire, work ability index questionnaire, and Nordic Questionnaire were used for data collection. Collected Data were analyzed using to SPSS ver. 20 Software .Independent t-test and Mann-Whitney were used.

Results: Independent t-test showed a significant relationship between the musculoskeletal disorders and work ability of workers (P<.001). Also Mann-Whitney test showed a significant relationship between the musculoskeletal disorders and total workload, dimensions of effort, temporal demand, frustration, mental demand and physical demand (P<0.001, P=0.004, P=0.005, P=0.022, P=0.024, respectively). Significant relationship was observed between the workers musculoskeletal disorders and performance dimension (P=0.087).

Conclusion: Mental workload of workers was high and their work ability was at an intermediate level. Based on the relationship between workload and work ability with musculoskeletal disorders, creating perfect job conditions, Providing training programs for employees and increasing workers ability can contribute to prevention of musculoskeletal disorders.