Trial reportBMC health services research2025
Can home care work be organized to promote musculoskeletal health for workers? Results from the GoldiCare cluster randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in BMC health services research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05487027 (Can Work be Organized to Become More Health Promoting for Employees in Home Care Services?), which is not on this map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Can Work be Organized to Become More Health Promoting for Employees in Home Care Services?
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Low back pain and work-related factors among home health care workers with self-governing or conventional team structure - a natural experiment with a cross-sectional design.International archives of occupational and environmental health · 2025Article
- "It's a good idea, but…": a qualitative evaluation of the GoldiCare intervention in Norwegian home care services.Frontiers in health services · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWorkers in home care have high sick leave rates, predominantly because of musculoskeletal pain. The Goldilocks Work Principle proposes that health should be promoted by a "just right" composition of work tasks. Weekly workloads differ substantially between home care workers, suggesting that certain workers may have workloads that are too high, impacting their musculoskeletal health. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a "GoldiCare" intervention redistributing weekly workloads to become more equal among the homecare workers. Outcomes were pain in the neck/shoulder and lower back, and the implementation of the intervention was also evaluated.
methodsA 16-week cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted with 125 workers from 11 home care units, divided into six intervention units and five control units. The operation coordinators of each intervention unit were educated in the Goldilocks Work Principle and provided with a planning tool to facilitate an even distribution of high care need clients. The control group continued their usual work. Primary outcomes were pain intensity in the neck/shoulder and lower back (0 to 10). Secondary outcomes included fatigue (0 to 10), composition of physical behaviors and postures (accelerometers), adherence to the intervention (weekly usage rates of the planning tool), and performance of the intervention (percentage of workers with an even distribution of workload).
resultsThe analysis showed no difference between the intervention and control groups in change in lower back pain (0.07, 95%CI[-0.29;0.43]), neck/shoulder pain (-0.06, 95%CI[-0.49;0.36]) or fatigue (0.04, 95%CI[-0.52;0.61]. No significant changes were observed in the composition of physical behaviors (p = 0.067) or postures (p = 0.080-0.131) between the two groups. The intervention was succesfully implemented in three units of the six, with adherence ranging from 82-100% across the intervention period. The remaining three units had an adherence of 0-47%. No improvement in performance was observed.
conclusionNo significant intervention effects were observed on musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, or the composition of physical behaviors and postures. The findings suggest that the intervention was not adequately implemented within the organization. Consequently, we cannot discern whether the lack of positive results were due to poor implementation or an ineffective intervention. Results thus highlight the need for a more comprehensive understanding of organizational structures within home care to facilitate more effective implementations. The hypothetical effectiveness of a fully implemented intervention remains unknown.
trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov ID: NCT05487027, submitted: 03/08/2022.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.