Recently most Japanese farmers pursue another trade as a side business, because they canonot make a living only by agricultural work. The working conditions of the side business are not necessarily good. The health care system for them are also not sufficient. Furthermore, housewives have adding burden from household duties to farm work and side business.
In this study, sixteen women employed in a canning factory were interviewed by four medical students. The factory were situated in rural district of Ehime prefecture and engaged about 90 workers including 30 women. The 16 women had various complaints caused by exposure to noise and organic solvents, and static load on the limbs. They had ten episodes of sickness or injuries due, or suspected to be due, to occupational cases during the period employed, 7.8 years on the average.
The more survey for health problems of working women in rural district are necessary.

Two hundred and four cases of injuries in agricultural accidents that were entered in the insurance documents of agricultural cooperative associations in Ehime prefecture from April 1987 to March 1988 were analyzed. Eighty-three percent were males and 17 % were females. Three cases died from the accidents. Sixty-four percent of the male cases were in their fifties or sixties and 59 % of the female cases were in their forties or fifties. The agricultural machines which were being used when the accidents occurred were bush-cutters (29 %), mounted-type monorails for conveyance (14 %), combine harvesters (10 %), riding-type tractors (9 %), walking-type tractors (5%), etc. These types of agricultural machine reflect the dominance of citrus fruits production characteristic of Ehime prefecture. The annual incidence rate is highest in mounted-type monorails (1.92/1, 000 units), followed by tillers (1.63) and combine harvesters (1.48). The greater part of the accidents happened from May to December, from 9: 00 to 12: 00 and from 14: 00 to 17: 00. The distributions by month and time of occurrence were considered to have a close bearing on the frequency of machine operation. Sundays, Fridays and national holidays had a relatively larger number of accident occurrences. The possible reasons are increased fatigue of operators on weekends and increased amount of farm-work on holidays by part-time farmers who have additional jobs outside farming; however, further studies are needed.

A follow-up study of the relation between methods of selecting medical students and performance after admission was investigated. The subjects were 318 students who had entered our medical school from 1987 through 1989. Two hundred fiftynine students had passed open entrance examinations and 59 students had passed special examinations for those who had been recommended by their high school principals. We found that students who had earned a degree other than a medical degree had the best performance, as measured by academic records, promotion, and results of the national examination for medical practitioners. They were followed in descending order by students who had been admitted upon recommendations of high school principals, students who had passed open entrance examinations immediately after graduation from high school, students who had prepared for entrance examinations for 1 or 2 years after high school, and students who had prepared for 3 years or more.

The relation between student selection methods, including results of entrance examinations, and progress after admission was analyzed by means of path analysis and discriminant analysis in 318 sudents. Among students who had been admitted on the basis of an open entrance examination, those with rank in high school record from high school and female students performed better in medical school, whereas students who had prepared for the entrance examination after graduation from high school performed worse. On the other hand, students who had rank in high school record from high shool, who had higher interview evaluations, or who had earned a degree other than a medical degree were more likely to pass the national examination for medical practitioners after a minimum of 6 years of study. Among students who had been admitted on the recommendations of high shool principals, those with better grades during high school records and higher interview evaluations had a higher success rate on the national examination for medical practitioners.

The relation between results of interview evaluation and progress after admission, especially the need to repeat years of school, dropping out, and results of the national examination for medical practitioners, was investigated in 318 students. Among students who had been admitted on the basis of open entrance examination, those who had lower interview evaluations needed to repeat a year of school at least three times more often than did other students. Among students who had been amitted on the basis of recommendations of high school principals, no such difference was observed, probably owing to selection bias. On the other hand, students who repeated a year of school had a significantly higher failure rate on the national examination for madical practitioners than did other students.

The eight subjective symptoms (shoulder stiffness, lumbago, urinary frequency at night, numbness of extremities, shortness of breath, sleep disturbance, dizziness and abdominal distension) were checked at the screening of circulatory diseases performed in a rural district in Ehime prefecture.
1. The complaint rates of the eight subjective symptoms were higher in female than those in male. The influence of aging was observed in urinary frequency at night and sleep disturbance. The higher complaint rates in the agricultural workers were not evident in the subjective symptoms except lumbago.
2. Factor analysis indicated that the eight subjective symptoms were constituted by (1) fatigue of circulatory system, (2) fatigue of musculoskeletal system and (3) aging effect.
3. The higher complaint rates were observed in these diagnosed as circulatory diseases, musculoskeletal diseases or gynecological diseases. The correlations between the eight subjective symptoms and the laboratory findings were not apparent. The result of path analysis indicated that the eight subjective symptoms were independently referable to the presence of illness.
4. The eight subjective symtoms were considered considered to be to evaluate health status of inhabitants in rural district.

We investigated the status of fatigue in a cohort of about 300 citrus fruits farmers in western Japan. The Fatigue Questionnaire for Farmers developed by the Rural Life Research Institute in Tokyo was used in this study. The severity of fatigue was assessed with the fatigue scale for the Questionnaire. The major results obtained were as follows;1. Fatigue scores at the farming season were not so high. It was assumed that the amount of agricultural work was small at that year because the citrus fruits crop was below average.2. The scores of fatigue, labor burden, satisfactory and health priority of the subjects at the farming season were not much high in comparison with those of the slack season. However, the fatigue situation indicated different tendencies between the male and female subjects.3. Comparison among three surveys including this study on farmers producing different agricultural products showed different fatigue situations.4. Forty percent of the questionnaires recovered could not be used for this analysis because of unanswered items. It was suggested that there is need of developing a questionnaire easier to answer for subjects.
Fatigue <1> ; FARMERS ; Seasons ; Questionnaires ; Japan

OBJECTIVEThe objective of this study was to examine the effects of educational intervention on joint angles of the trunk and lower extremity and on muscle activities during patient-handling task.

METHODSThirty-two subjects (17 males and 15 females) volunteered for the study. They were classified into three groups: intervention group 1, comprised of first grade physical therapist students; control group, which included first grade occupational therapist students; intervention group 2, which comprised third grade physical therapist students. The educational intervention during the experimental period consisted of: (1) 12 regular classes and short-term clinical practice for the students of intervention group 1; (2) long-term clinical practice, relating to patient-handling task, for the students of intervention group 2. The following experiments were repeated before and after the educational intervention. Each subject was asked to transfer a male (55 kg) from one chair to a second chair (left to right) and then back again to the original chair (right to left). The flexion angles of the trunk, hip and knee joints were quantified by means of the dynamic three-dimensional biomechanical analysis. Muscle activities (% maximum voluntary contraction, %MVC) of biceps brachii, trapezius, rectus femoris and erector spinae muscles were measured using surface electromyography (EMG). The effects of group, gender, measurement time and side on joint angles of trunk and lower extremity, %MVC of four muscle activities and transfer time were assessed.

RESULTSAlthough the EMG analysis could not clearly demonstrate any reduction of physical load to the low back, the flexion angles of the hip and knee joints of student subjects during the patient-handling task became larger and that of the trunk became smaller in the group given the educational intervention.

CONCLUSIONThe finding of this study suggests that the posture of the study subjects changed to the squat lifting method, which is preferable for reducing the physical load to the lower back, as a result of the educational intervention.