Acoustics issues such as noise in the workplace remains one of the most prevalence occupational hazard especially in
the manufacturing industry with heavy machineries. Increasing mechanization in all industries and most trades has
since proliferated the noise problem. In Malaysia, much has been studied and is known about the auditory effects of
noise. However less attention has been given to the non-auditory effects of noise such as annoyance, stress, and work
performance, and concern about such effects is a relatively recent phenomenon. In view of this, this study aims to
determine the level of noise from different type of machines and tools in a manufacturing plant and also the effects
of noise to the employees. A structured questionnaire was used to assess the effects of noise on the workers and
sound level meter was used to measure the noise level at selected work areas. The results of this study showed that
nearly all the identified work areas exceeded the action level of 85 dB(A) and four of these areas noise levels’ are
more than 90 dB(A) which is the permissible exposure limit according to the Factories and Machinery (Noise
Exposure) Regulations 1989. For the questionnaire, it was found that annoyance topped the noise effects list with
51.4%, followed by stress with 40.0%, hearing deterioration (14.3%) and job performance deterioration (2.9%). As a
conclusion, noise control or preventive measures are suggested in order to minimize the health risks from noise
exposure.
A cross sectional study to determine the exposure of heat and its biological effects on the workers in a plastic factory located in the Shah Alam Industrial Estate, Selangor, Malaysia. Forty five respondents from the polymer section in the factory were selected as the respondents. Variables measured were the environmental temperature (WBGTin), air velocity, relative humidity, body temperature, average heart and recovery heart rate. QUESTEMP°34 Area Heat Stress Monitor was used to measure the environmental temperature in °C (WBGTin) and relative humidity (%). Velocicheck Model TSI 8830 was used to measure the air velocity in meter per second (m/s) while the OMRON Blood Pressure Monitor Model T3, was used to measure average heart rate and recovery heart rate. Body temperature (°C) was measured by the Instant Ear Thermometer-OMRON Gentle Temperature Model MC509. Interviews using questionnaires were used to determine respondents’ socioeconomic background, previous risk factors on heat exposure and other information related to heat stress. Results showed that the mean environmental temperature for the exposed group was 28.75°C, the mean air velocity was 0.15 m/s and the mean relative humidity was 58.1%. These production workers were exposed occasionally to heat when loading plastic powder into the molds as well as demolding the finished plastic products from the molds. The average time of monitoring was 2 hours for intermittent exposure and 8 hours duration for overall exposure. Maximum demand for work load was measured 1 minute after work activities were stopped at the demolding section. There was a significant difference between body temperature and average heart rate before work, after 2 hours of work and after 8 hours of work ( p < 0.001). The mean recovery heart rate after 1 min was 88.0 ± 12.0 beat per min. (bpm), indicating that there is no excessive physiological demand. Body temperature (36.8 ± 0.40°C) and average heart rate after 8 hours (78 ± 12 bpm) indicated a good body control of heat exposure. Five out of six workplaces monitored had temperatures of greater than 28°C (ACGIH TLV). The workers were exposed to moderate heat stress during the study period, however, body temperature and average heart rate measurement did not reach unacceptable level of physiologic strain.
This research aims to identify the issues among female engineers in the perspective of their career success. The issues that were identified are work-life balance, gender stereotyping and slow progression on the career success. The research design is a qualitative approach by in-depth interview. The research design which consisted of ten items aimed to explore female engineers’ satisfaction of working in the construc-tion industry, unequal employment in the workplace, persistent problems in managing work-life balance, the role of gender in developing career success and also factors that positively and negatively affect the retention of female engineers in the construc-tion industry. Five participants were recruited from various construction companies in Malaysia. Four of them were interviewed via phone calls and one via electronic mail. The findings from this research show that work-life balance issue is the main issue. Other issues include gender stereotype, nature of work and the competition among male and female engineers. From these findings, one recommendation is that the top management of an organization can provide full support to the employees so that they can be more productive in the workplace and are able to balance their work and non-work responsibilities.
Illness and injury have a significant impact on employees, their families and employers. The consequences faced by an injured worker could lead to disability, which could then lead to inability to work. This study examined the patterns of the Return to Work (RTW) using data from The Social Security Organisation (SOCSO) of Malaysia RTW database from 2010 to 2013. Factors of successful return to work, employees' salary upon returning to formal employment were also investigated. Gender, age, year of injury, industry, and job hierarchy were found to be significant predictors of employees' salary upon returning to work. Although there are other costs involved on the part of employers and employees, themselves, in the long term the financial returns that can be brought back by injured workers who have successfully returned to work combined with the qualitative benefits substantially outweighs the costs of RTW program.
Matched MeSH terms: Return to Work/economics; Return to Work/statistics & numerical data*
A survey of colour vision deficiency among 1427 medical students and healthcare personnel in Seremban revealed a prevalence of 3.2% with a marked male predominance (males 6.7%, females 0.4%). In view of the potential difficulties faced by such personnel in clinical works, early detection of this deficiency allowed appropriate counselling.
Quality of life is associated with several factors, including personal living styles and working conditions. This article aims to investigate the factors associated with quality of life among small and medium enterprises (SME) workers in 4 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. A total of 2014 workers from food and textile industries were asked to answer a questionnaire about their sociodemographic characteristics, working environment and conditions, and quality of life. Results from showed that lifestyle (ie, alcohol intake and exercising), working characteristics (ie, shift work, working hours, and working days) and workplace conditions were associated with SME workers' quality of life (ie, physical, psychological, social, and environmental domain). Among the 16 types of workplace conditions, "sitting on the chair" and "slippery floor" most affect their quality of life . It is important for these variables to be taken into account in promoting workers' well-being and quality of life.
OBJECTIVE: The aim is to find rate of return to work of surgically treated thoracolumbar fracture patients and to know if back pain, compensation issues or neurological status influence this rate.
METHODOLOGY: A retrospective cohort study analysing the patients with thoracolumbar fractures treated surgically from January 2008 till December 2009.
RESULTS: Neurological status is the main factor deciding return to work in this group. Back pain and compensation related issues were not statistically significant in influencing return to work. 74% of patients in this group return to work.
CONCLUSION: Return to work among the patients with thoracolumbar fracture, treated surgically, is mainly dependent on neurological status and not the compensation related issues or back pain.
Purpose:The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between workplace mindfulness, cognition, emotion, behaviour and psychology on job performance. In addition, age was tested as the moderating factor on the relationship between workplace mindfulness, cognition, emotion, behaviour and psychology on job performance. Method: The research was conducted on nurses working in Malaysian government hospitals among 127 respondents were chosen. Data was collected from the respondents using a structured questionnaire. The data were analysed with factor analysis, reliability test and multiple regression analysis. Results: Results indicated that only workplace mindfulness, cognition and behaviour had a positive significant influence on job performance. Age moderated the relationship between the cognition, behaviour and psychology positively and significantly on job performance. Contribution: The Malaysian government hospital management is suggested to focus on these three factors in order to overcome job performance issue among nurses.
A study was carried out on 79 female telephone operators working in a Telecommunication Centre in Kuala Lumpur to determine the prevalence of Work Related Upper Limb Disorders (WRULD) and its risk factors. Data collection for this study was done between December 2000 and May 2001. The presence of WRULD was determined based on a guided questionnaire and physical examination. The response rate for this study was 94.9% (n= 75) and results showed that the prevalence of WRULD among the female telephone operators was 48.0%: Stage 1= 38.9%, Stage 2= 19.4%, Stage 3= 38.9%, Stage 4= 0% and Stage 5= 2.8%. In the telecommunication centre, it was found that those with WRULD had a mean of 11.59±9.09 years of employment duration whereas those without WRULD had a mean of 9.89 ± 8.48 years of employment duration. None of the factors studied such as Body Mass Index, age, ethnicity, menstrual cycle, hormone replacement therapy, overtime work, duration of employment in the present unit and in the telecommunication center differ in distribution between subjects with and without WRULD. This could be contributed by factors such as small number of subjects or the common healthy worker effect found in occupational health research. The findings studied of this study show that almost 40.0% of the workers experienced pain and neurological symptoms. Since none of the factors was found to be associated with WRULD, an elaborate study with a case-control design is needed in order to match cases and enable researchers to control the effect of confounding factors. This will ensure risk factors pertinent to WRULD in the Malaysian setting to be identified.
The purpose of this study is to identify the effectiveness of integrative therapy treatment towards
depression and aggression among prison inmates. Integrative therapy in this study refers to treatment
module which are consisted of four integrated theories in a counselling process. It involved the
combined therapy of Person Client Centred (PCC), Rational Emotions Behaviour Therapy (REBT)
and Choice Theory Reality Therapy (CTRT) as technical treatment. Meanwhile, Stimulus Organism
Response (SOR) act as educational principle or training. Integrative therapy is conducted on the
respondents for six session of group counselling. This study is a quasi-experiment involving 160 depressed prison inmates (80 treatment; 80 control) and 140 aggressive inmates (70 treatment; 70
control) from five prison institutions as the respondent for this study using purposive sampling.
Inmates are identified as respondents using high cutting point of depression using Beck Depression
Inventory (BDI) and high aggression using Aggressive Questionnaires (AQ). For the data analysis, nonparametric
test such as Mann-Whitney Test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test were used based on the
normality test using Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk test. Result from the Mann-Whitney Test
shows that the treatment group had higher declining rate as compared to the controlled group for
depression and aggression. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test also shows the same result as the treatment
group indicates a decline in rate from the pre and post of the treatment compared to the controlled
group. The results of this study are hope to act as the medium for using integrative model which is
rarely use in studies in this country especially in the field of treatment for prison inmates. It is also
expected that it can be applied in different setting which offer treatment service such as hospitals,
social work institution, police institute, schools, higher learning institutions and others.
When public health researchers study the health effects of disasters (whether "naturally-occurring," disasters due to failure of technology, or disasters due to terrorism), some aspects of the post-disaster situation of victims are often overlooked. Social science research has shown that the vast majority of people tend to behave altruistically during and after a disaster. Nevertheless, cases of victimization of survivors do occur. They can include post-disaster victimization of survivors by other individuals (including fellow survivors, opportunistic outsiders, and even unethical aid workers and rogue members of the police, armed forces or international organizations such as the United Nations), groups (such as organized criminal gangs) and institutions (through neglect, incompetence, bureaucratic inefficiency or through institutionalized discriminatory practices). In this article, various kinds of post-disaster victimization that can occur are discussed.
This paper presents the solution to a calculation of the pH of a very dilute solution of a weak acid, taking into account the effect of the hydroxonium ions generated from the ionization of the acid on the ionization of water, also a very weak acid. To be solved successfully, this calculation involves the concepts of conservation of charge, pH, equilibria and the application of the general solution to a cubic equation. Such an exercise requires the application of skills in algebra, and can provide a core of understanding that can prepare advanced students for many different sorts of calculations that represent real-life problems in the chemical sciences. A programme is presented in C++ which enables the work of students to be individualized so that each student in a class can work through a slightly different pH calculation, in such a way that a class supervisor can quickly check each student’s result for accuracy.This exercise is presented as a potential means of enabling students to undertake and master similar types of calculations involving the application of complex algebra to problems related to equilibria and solution dynamics.
The current study aims to examine lecturer readiness for English Medium Instruction (EMI) in higher educational institutions and the contextual influences of gender, age, academic qualification, teaching experience, EMI course teaching involvement, and EMI training. A quantitative research design was employed, and a survey questionnaire was completed by 227 lecturers (out of 250 invited participants) from private universities in Klang Valley, Malaysia to gauge self-ratings of personal knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes in educating EMI courses. The collected data were subsequently analysed via the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 27.0 software before revealing the findings from the inferential statistics of the t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on lecturers' gender, age, academic qualification, teaching experience, EMI course teaching involvement, and EMI training. Resultantly, the important role of lecturers' knowledge, understanding, skills, abilities, and attitudes was highlighted to further enhance intercultural communicative competence in managing the increasingly diversified student body in EMI classrooms.
Factors related to overweight were examined in a cross-sectional survey that included 1612 women workers from 10 large electronics assembly factories in Peninsular Malaysia. Respondents were Malaysian citizens, direct production workers below the supervisory level, and had worked at least a year in the factory where they were presently employed. Heights and weights were taken to calculate the body mass index (BMI). Weights and BMI increased with increasing age. After adjusting for age, odds ratios for overweight were significantly raised for married women in relation to not married women (OR 1.5, 95% CI=1.15-2.02), lower secondary education in relation to higher than upper secondary education (OR 1.8, 95% CI=1.06-3.14), monthly income RM800-999 (OR 1.7, 95% CI=1.21-2.45) and >/=RM1,000 (OR 1.8, 95% CI=1.23-2.72) in relation to working in rotating shifts that included nightshifts (OR 1.6, 95% CI=1.28-2.06), and not staying in hostel (OR 1.4, 95% CI=1.02-1.88). In a logistic regression model with all variables included as covariates, the factors significantly associated with overweight were age, marital status, education, income, and working in rotating shifts. The overall prevalence of overweight was 37.4%; the overall mean BMI was 24.2+/-5.4 kg/m(2). Prevalence of overweight and mean BMI for younger age groups were similar to Malay women in the country-wide representative National Health and Morbidity Survey II, but the older age groups in this study had higher overweight prevalence and mean BMI than the national sample. Electronics women workers face a higher risk of overweight, and is an important group for nutrition intervention.
Chronic sagittal band injury with tendon dislocation of the extensor digitorum communis in the hand often requires operative stabilization. Various surgical techniques have been reported to repair and reconstruct the sagittal band. Nonetheless, most of the techniques are technically demanding and require donor graft. In this case report, we report a novel surgical technique to centralize and stabilize the tendon by reattaching the radial sagittal band with anchor sutures. The advantages of this new technique are simple, no donor morbidity and stable repair to restore the normal biomechanics of the tendon. The patient was able to return to work in three months and no recurrent dislocation was noted at review two years after surgery.
A cross-sectional study using structured questionnaires was conducted to determine the level of knowledge, attitude and practice on breast-feeding among working mothers. A total of 200 working mothers who attended the Child Health Clinics in Temerloh, for their chil-dren's third DPT/Polio vaccination were interviewed. Eighty-nine percent of the mothers successfully initiat-ed breast-feeding. However, there was a rapid decline in breast-feeding each month especially during the period when the mothers returned to work. Only 33.5% of the mothers had at least one experience in expressing and feeding expressed breast milk to their babies and only 47% reported that they had been taught by health work-ers. The mothers scored highest on the 'benefits of breast-feeding' with a mean knowledge score of 77.9% and lowest on "storage of expressed breast milk" (35.4%). Overall the mothers showed a positive attitude towards breast-feeding. The two main reasons given for stopping breast-feeding were "work" (61.4%) and "insufficient milk" (57.9%). In conclusion, other areas of breast-feeding besides benefits such as "expressing and storing breast milk" and "how" to practise breast-feeding while working away from home are also impor-tant for working mothers.
PURPOSE: Workstyle can be defined as an individual pattern of cognitions, behaviours and physiological reactivity that can occur while performing job tasks. Workstyle has been associated with the development of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) amongst office workers in developed countries. However, little is known about the contribution of workstyle on MSDs in developing countries such as Malaysia. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between workstyle and musculoskeletal discomfort in a sample of office workers in Malaysia.
METHODS: Office workers (N = 417; response rate 65.5 %) from four organisations completed a survey measuring physical and psychosocial hazards, job satisfaction, work-life balance, workstyle, and MSD discomfort levels. Hierarchical regression analyses were undertaken to examine predictors associated with self-reported musculoskeletal discomfort, and more specifically the relationship between workstyle and MSD discomfort.
RESULTS: Musculoskeletal discomfort was significantly associated with working through pain, mental health, physical demands, gender and work-life balance (R (2) = 50.2, adjusted R (2) = 0.48; F (13, 324) = 25.09, p = 0.001). Working through pain is the strongest risk factor associated with MSD discomfort (ß = 0.49, p = 0.001) compared to other potential risk factors.
CONCLUSIONS: Working through pain is influenced by work, social culture and religious beliefs. Workplace MSDs interventions that focus on the impact of physical and psychosocial hazards with emphasis on addressing adverse workstyles should take into account aspects related to work and social culture of the target population. Changes are recommended at both employee and management levels such as better communications and understanding concerning workplace problems with regards to minimizing MSDs at work.
Prevalence and predictors associated with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) vary considerably between countries. It is plausible that socio-cultural contexts may contribute to these differences. We conducted a cross-sectional survey with 1184 Malaysian and Australian office workers with the aim to examine predictors associated with MSD discomfort. The 6-month period prevalence of self-reported MSD discomfort for Malaysian office workers was 92.8% and 71.2% among Australian workers. In Malaysia, a model regressing level of musculoskeletal discomfort against possible risk factors was significant overall (F [6, 370] = 17.35; p work-life balance (β = -0.13). In Australia, the regression model is also significant (F [6, 539] = 16.47; p Work-life balance was significantly associated with increased MSD discomfort for the Malaysian population only. Design and implementation of MSD risk management needs to take into account the work practices and culture of the target population.