Frequency of Work-Related Neck Pain in Freelancers

Abstract

The use of electronic devices like tablets, smartphones, desktop and laptop users has been increased to a lot of extent from past few years. So, the workers are more prone to be affected by neck pain, shoulder pain and other forms of musculoskeletal problems, due to lack of awareness about bad posture and ergonomics about workstation in their environment. Objectives: To find out the frequency of work-related neck pain in freelancers. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study containing of questionnaire based online survey in which the data were collected by asking the participants to fill the form online. There were 100 participants who were actively working in this field from last 6 months and all of them were having neck related problems. The data was analyzed using statistical packages of social sciences and different tests were performed including Chi-square and standard deviation and square tab. Results: Statistics show that 27% of freelancers were suffered from neck and shoulder pain, 43% suffered from neck pain along with other symptoms and followed by headache in which 34% rarely suffered from headache, 38% suffered from moderate headache and 28% from severe headache. Emotional findings show that 44% faced frustration, anger and sadness to some extent. Conclusions: The neck discomfort due to working online increases with sitting still for more than 1 hour, making physical activity difficult as well as making lifestyle change. A significant Association was found between lifestyle changes due to neck pain, neck pain intensity with online working.