Housekeepers and care aides employed in health-care settings make and clean beds on a regular basis as part of their job. Some of the musculoskeletal issues faced by workers performing these tasks include:

Making bed:

• Arm stretches away from the body when reaching to across beds, resulting in an awkward shoulder posture.
• The trunk of the body is in an awkward posture because of bending forward or sideways to remove dirty linen or to and put on clean linen
• Worker stoops forward, squats, or kneels to manually crank beds up or down

Moving furniture to clean area:

• Worker pulls bed away from the wall or lifts or pulls furniture out of the way so the area around the bed can be cleaned

Cleaning the mattress, the base of the bed and under the bed

• The trunk of the body is in an awkward posture when the worker bends forward to clean the full width of the mattress.
• The shoulder is in awkward posture when worker holds the mattress up to clean the underside of the mattress or the base of the bed underneath
• The trunk of the body is in an awkward posture when the worker bends to reach below the bed to clean. Worker may squat or kneel on hard floor to access the area under the bed

Use this information to develop a Physical Demands Analysis. Determine what controls you will recommend to eliminate or minimize the risks faced by workers doing this job.