Introduction:

transport drivers are exposed to long working days that can cause physical fatigue due to excessive visual concentration and effort in various muscles. The occupational fatigue they experiment may be defined as an unpleasant state, because of the saturation of the muscular, mental and affective activity that induces diseases in the gastric, circulatory and immunological systems as well as sleep disorders.

Objective:

to analyze perceived occupational fatigue in relation with its associated factors, in drivers of transportation companies from three provinces of Ecuador.

Materials and methods:

a non-experimental, prospective, analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted in 141 professional drivers of three Ecuadorian provinces. The Swedish occupational fatigue questionnaire SOFI-SM was applied, which evaluated the physical, mental, psychical fatigue and irritability. A bivariate analysis was carried out with the nominal variables age, schooling, and seniority through Pearsonꞌs Chi squared and Cramer’s tests. To verify the fatigue by province of origin, the analysis of covariance was performed using the Kruskal-Wallis test.

Results:

the inadequate and unacceptable level of physical fatigue was evidenced, with a prevalence of 64.5 % of statistical inference with marital status. There were no significant differences between the total scores of the instrument and the province of origin.

Conclusions:

the high level of fatigue indicated the urgency of implementing recovery activities, adapting schedules and hiring more staff, since this exhaustion causes imperfections, distractions and bad decisions that lead traffic accidents. It is necessary to intervene from the occupational medicine in the evaluation of the health of the drivers to find out which pre-existing diseases could be influencing occupational fatigue.

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