Prevalence of Occupational Musculoskeletal Disorders amongst Employees Working from Home since Covid-19 Pandemic

Introduction: The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to biggest number of employees globally bound to work remotely. Researchers claim remote work will be the default mode of work for many organisations in the foreseeable future. Working from home is beneficial for employees, employers, and society in terms of the economy and the environment. But this new normal pattern comes with an added risk of various musculoskeletal health problems that need to be addressed and acted upon to prevent it in novice working from home employees. In such work from home situations where there is limited availability of resources remotely the awareness about ergonomics is of utmost importance to prevent musculoskeletal distress amongst the employees. Risk of Musculoskeletal Disorders due to change in work setup, working conditions, working hours and the loss of barrier between personal and professional work environment needs to be analysed to help neophytes working from home employees maintain a healthy work-life balance. A prevalence study will help occupational health providers to plan and prepare better for the "new normal" working conditions.

Methodology: Permission was taken from the ethics committee to conduct the research. A self-made questionnaire was prepared and then validated. For data collection, consent has been attained from participants and questionnaire has been given to them via Google forms or physically. Data collection is in process and the data collected will be analysed by descriptive analysis.

Results: Gender wise distribution was 71.4% males and 28.6% females. Prevalence of discomfort in neck (64.8%), shoulder (19%), elbow (10.5%), wrist (15.2), upper back (49.5%), low back (65.7%), hip (13.7%), knee (19.7%) and ankle (12.7%) were identified.

Conclusion: The highest prevalence of musculoskeletal discomfort was identified in the low back (65.5%) followed by the neck (62.9%).