Clinical trial NCT05487027: Can Work be Organized to Become More Health Promoting for Employees in Home Care Services?
Official title: Can Work be Organized to Become More Health Promoting for Employees in Home Care Services?
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Occupational Exposure
Musculoskeletal Pain
Work-related Injury
Low Back Pain
Shoulder Pain
Neck Pain
Lead sponsor: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration
name: Trondheim Kommune
First posted: 2022-08-04
Enrollment: 131
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: Individuals are grouped in clusters, where the clusters are the home care units in Trondheim. Half of the units will be randomized to control, half will be randomized to intervention. All units will be randomized at the same time.
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: This is a two-group, cluster randomized controlled trial designed to assess a health promoting intervention in the home care sector. The intervention aims to evenly distribute the patients requiring high levels of demanding care across all workers on the units, which may lower the working strain and thus the incidence of musculoskeletal pain. The two groups in the study will be a control group and an intervention group. The intervention will last for approximately 4 months.

Detailed description: This is a two-group cluster randomized controlled trial to compare an organizational intervention to control. The home care units will be treated as clusters to avoid contamination within units.

Control group: No intervention, their work will continue as usual without any instructions from researchers.

Intervention group: The intervention will consist of the operational managers distributing the physically strenuous shifts evenly between the workers in each home care unit. This will be achieved using a tool developed in Microsoft Excel which gives an overview over how much strain we expect each shift to have and gives a score on how well the operational manager distributes the strain between employees.

The intervention will last for approximately 4 months, depending on duration of pre and post measurements.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Home care worker in one of the included home care units in Trondheim municipality.
* More than or equal to 50% working position at the home care unit.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Physically incapable of performing day to day tasks.
* Any illness during the measurement week
* Pregnancy

Primary outcomes:
measure: Between group changes in musculoskeletal pain in the neck and shoulder from pre to post measurement
timeFrame: 7 days during baseline measurements, 7 days during post measurements
measure: in musculoskeletal pain in the lower back from pre to post measurement
timeFrame: 7 days during baseline measurements, 7 days during post measurements
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Between group changes in the composition of time spent standing, arms elevated and trunk inclined
timeFrame: 7 days during baseline measurements, 7 days during post measurements
measure: Between group changes in fatigue at end of shift
timeFrame: 7 days during baseline measurements, 7 days during post measurements
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Bergheim hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Heimdal Hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Klæbu hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Lade hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Nidarvoll hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Nidelven hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Saupstad hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Spongdal hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Strinda Hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Strindheim hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
city: Trondheim
country: Norway
facility: Valentinlyst hjemmetjeneste
state: Trøndelag
Study officials:
References: