Classrooms’ ergonomic inadequacy and discomfort at a private academic institution in Recife-PE

Abstract

Objective: To verify the ergonomic adequacy of the classrooms and the level of comfort attributed by the students at the school environment of a private academic institution, in the city of Recife, Pernambuco. Methods: A series of cases, cross-sectional and descriptive study conducted from August to September, 2006, having as its population the students from the following courses: Physiotherapy, Law, Tourism, Information Systems and International Relations. The sample consisted of 126 students selected by accidental sampling. The comfort level was evaluated regarding the classrooms’ ergonomic adequacy in accordance to temperature, noise and luminosity, while for the seats the evaluation occurred by the comparison of their dimensions to the norms determined by ABNT (Brazilian Association of Norms and Techniques) and the students’ anthropometric measures. Also, they were questioned about muscular and skeletal referred complaints and the disturbance at their extra-classes activities. Results: It was observed that items related to temperature, luminosity and noise were insignificant. It was verified that the seat dimensions were away of the technical norms and inadequate for the students’ anthropometric measures. It was observed that 104 (82.54%) of the students referred one or more complaints of local pains, being 75 (35.71%) at cervical column and 74 (35.24%) at lumbar column. Among those that referred pain, 75 (60.32%) said that these symptoms also disturbed them at their extra-classes activities. Conclusion: In the studied sample, the school seat was the main factor of referred discomfort, which shows the importance of its ergonomic improvement and regarding the questions related to luminosity, temperature and noise, the presented complaints were not significant.