Suitability of the banks to office ergonomy in Gaziantep city center and health complaints of the bank staff

Objective: It was aimed to determine the suitability of the banks to office ergonomy in the Gaziantep city center, and health complaints of the bank staff. Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study. 73 bank offices and their staff at the Gaziantep city center were examined without sampling. Number of people involved to the study was 1006. Access rate to the study area was 91.1%. Results: Age average in the study was 32.34±6.90 years. 44% of the staff reported that they were disturbed by noise; 24% by heat; 12% by light and 5.3% by moisture. It was found that 58.5% of the staff had musculo-skeletal system complaints. The most frequent complaints were of waist pain (29%), back pain (28.8%) and neck pain (27.9%). 20.4% of the staff had visual disturbances, 6.5% had varicosis and 6.9% had hemorrhoid. It was observed that 97.7% of the offices were light colored and 87.7% had indirect lightening. Table height of 87.8% and table length of 42.9% of the staff were suitable. It was found that 96.2% of the staff had 5 leged and rotatable chairs, 95.9% had arm supported chairs, and 94% had height level adjustment on their chairs. As a result of logistic regression analysis it was found that the probability of having musculo-skeletal system complaints was 2.710 times higher for the ones that do exercise as compared to the ones that do not do exercise; 2.314 times higher for women as compared to men; 2.288 times higher for the ones have university degree as compared to high school graduates; 1.915 times higher for marrieds as compared to singles; 1.552 times higher for the administrators as compared to officers. Conclusion: Offices is the place where a person spends most of his/her time and exposed to important environmental factors. Today, parallel to technological developments, more work has been done with less movements. The importance of the study can be concluded from the fact that more than half of the people in the study have musculo-skeletal system complaints although the age average is low. It is very important to give short breaks and to make little movements especially in the workplaces where the works are done by sitting for a long time. It is vital to educate the administrators and the staff on this issue. Key Words: Bank, Ergonomy, Musculo-Skeletal system.