INTRODUCTION: diagnostic radiologists spend most of their workday sitting down. Corresponding sedentary behavior has been linked to adverse health profiles and increased risk of developing chronic diseases including musculoskeletal disorders such as musculoskeletal cumulative trauma disorder, and even cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, obesity and more. Poor posture and poor body position, especially for prolonged periods, might increase the risk for the aforementioned disorders among radiologists. While the recent years have witnessed an explosion of knowledge regarding office workers sitting posture, the data regarding sitting behavior among radiologists is still lacking.
PURPOSE: 1) Real-time assessment of the posture of a seated physician during a regular workday using a multi-sensor sitting posture monitoring system. 2) Assessing the ability of biofeedback system to improve sitting quality among radiologists.
METHODS AND RESULTS: The study involved 13 healthy adult radiologists (age: 28-65) from Rambam Medical Center Radiology Department. Those volunteers stated not suffering from any severe nervous system or musculoskeletal disorders. The experiment was divided into two phases: observational phase and interventional phase. Sitting posture monitoring was performed using SeatBack, a multi-sensor interactive device mounted on the radiologist seat gathering real-time data. Sitting postures were classified into 5 sitting positions: a “good” position, and 4 “bad” positions (forward-bending, slumped, leaning-right, and leaning-left sitting posture). During the observational phase SeatBack system monitored radiologist sitting postures without any interference, calculating the physician total time of “bad” sitting posture during a typical 8-hour workday. During the interventional phase ergonomic seating instructions were provided to the seated radiologist. Furthermore, a biofeedback was delivered to the seated physician via mobile application and tactile stimulation such as vibration after spending 2 minutes in a ”bad” posture or while continuously sitting>40 minutes.
The observational phase demonstrated that radiologists spent approximately 6 hours of their workday seated, 78% of which were seated “improperly”. Additionally, analyzing the individual sitting pattern of each radiologist revealed distinct preferred sitting positions and behaviors. Interestingly, the addition of biofeedback alerts during the interventional phase provided a tremendous additional value, significantly reducing the radiologist “bad” posture by 33% (52% of their time compared to 78% in the observational phase).
CONCLUSION: by observing and analyzing a radiologist regular workday, we demonstrated that radiologists spend most of their workday sitting down, mostly sitting in a “bad” sitting position. Using a multi-sensor sitting posture monitoring system along with interactive biofeedback alerts significantly improved sitting quality, assumably decreasing the sedentary-related morbidity among radiologists.
