ABSTRACT
the important reasons for that is nurse's physical overwork, so as to cause low-back injury. Lifting and transferring of patients are believed to be the most frequent precipitating factors or causes of low-back injury. The reasons which cause low-back injury in nursing care are rather complex. But the main reasons [1], [2], [3] are the following four points, (1)poor working postures, (2)living burden, (3)long duration time per lift, (4) many steps per lift. The most important characteristic of the lifting performed in nursing care is that a 'living burden' is handled. The nursing staff is probably more often subject to unsuccessful lift due to unforeseen incidents. On the other hand, the patient can not be lifted as burden. We should consider the 'living' meaning, e.g. more difficult or careful to handle. Thus, at least five different factors need to be considered in design the human support instruments. There are the physical stresses to the nursing personnel, patient characteristics, safety of patients and nurses, comfort of patients and nurses and time required to use the instruments. In other words, the human support instruments should be safe and com for tab l e , s h o u l d be e as i 1 y accessible, they should be easy to operate and should not require excessive time to use it. There may be various schemes to prevent the low-back injury of nursing care, e.g. pre-employment screening, working environment, health education lifting and handling training and so on, only a means in an area could not solve this comple~ problem. This paper mainly focus on bott the physical stresses to the nursing
