Past year prevalence of low back pain in nursing staff – Does it make a difference whether they work in ward based areas, or in out patient areas?

Jenefer Fraser                                                                                                                     Superviser: Ed Wilmot

Abstract

Low back pain is common in the general population, some studies have reported that 65 – 80% of the population will experience low back pain at least once in their life (Karahan, Bayraktar, 2003). Amongst nursing staff low back pain is a huge problem. Some studies report that 85% of nursing staff will experience at least one episode of low back pain within their careers (Karahan, 2003).

With these facts in mind, is it possible that the area of occupation of nursing staff is relevant in the past year prevalence of low back pain in nursing staff? The author intends to investigate whether the area of occupation increases the past year prevalence of low back pain, investigate whether or not any treatment has been sought for low back pain experienced by nursing staff and investigate the diagnosis formulated for any back pain suffered by nursing staff.

One hundred questionnaires were posted via internal mail to the randomly selected nurses drawn from a database of nursing staff whom had been employed by the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust since or before October 2003. Fifty were sent to nurses working within out patients departments and fifty to ward based nursing staff.

Twenty six responses were received from ward based nursing staff and 36 from out patient areas based staff (n=62). 77% of ward based nurses had experienced low back pain within the last year, compared to 41% of out patients based nursing staff. A Fishers Exact test was used to analyse this data and concluded that the two sided p value was 1.000 (p>0.05), which is considered not significant. The relative risk = 1.103 and the 95% confidence interval = 0.4722 to 2.576. This leads us to the conclusion that there is no significant difference which area a nurse has been employed in relation to the past year prevalence of low back pain.