A Study on Work Ability Index and Physical Work Capacity on the Base of Fax Equation VO2 Max in Male Nursing Hospital Staff in Isfahan, Iran

Background: the purpose of this research is to establish theability of employees by work ability index (wai), physical workcapacity (pwc), and finding the correlation between them.establishing the pwc index with attention to wai values for thepurpose of saving in costs and time of pwc measurements isanother aim of this project.methods: the present research is an analytic cross-sectional andone-trail study. the study population consists of 228 randomlyselected registered nurses from hospitals in isfahan (iran). thewai and pwc were established through wai questionnaire andfax equation and by using ergometer bicycle, respectively. theresulting data were analyzed using spss 16 software.results: average wai and pwc among the study population were38.25±4.4 and 4.45±0.7, respectively. pearson test results showedno significant correlation between pwc and wai in different agegroups (r=0.3 and p > 0.05). multiple linear regression analysisshowed that the variables of age and diagnosed diseases were themost effective factors of wai (b=0.18 and p > 0.05). pearson testrevealed a significant correlation between the number of diagnoseddiseases and pwc index in age groups of 40-49 years.conclusion: average wai in this research, like other studies onsimilar jobs is in the acceptable level of > 36. work ability indexand pwc index in different age groups did not show a significantcorrelation and this suggests that there are essential discrepanciesin work ability evaluations made by each index and it is not possibleto predict pwc index using wai values. given the pwc resultsand the level of nursing staff ’s activity (low, medium) the wai isa suitable instrument to establish the professionals’ abilities. thisstudy revealed that 27.6% of individuals were subject to mediumlowwork ability risk (wai < 37), which was 1.8 times that offinland’s professional health institute, which could be caused byshift working and increased working hours.