Low back pain prevalence in nurses in hospital context

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Pedro Miguel
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Martins, Rosa, Serranheira, Florentino
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.7559/gestaoedesenvolvimento.2016.289

Background: Low back pain is common in nurses working in hospitals. The causes for this pain are various and can have its origins in individual, psychosocial and professional/organizational factors. Objective: To identify the prevalence and the causes of low back pain in nurses working in hospitals and relate the self-reported symptoms with clinical evaluation in order to contribute to the prevention. Method: This study is cross-sectional, descriptive-correlative and quantitative. Initially a questionnaire was applied on low back pain (adaptation of the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire) to 135 nurses at a hospital in Lisbon. Later was performed a clinical evaluation of 48 of these nurses. Results: The results show a high prevalence of low back pain (60.7%) in the sample nurses, this being associated with some sociodemographic, organizational and professional variables. Stand out from the age group (p=0.016), height (p=0.035), shift work (p=0.044) and length of service (p=0.005). Also “the positioning/mobilization of patient in bed” (p=0.026), “get the patient out of bed without mechanical assistance” (p=0.004), “standing” (65.9%), “tilting” (86.6%) and rotating (76.8%) the trunk” and “handling charges” (85.4%) proved related to the presence of low back pain. Concerning to clinical evaluation, 89.6% of nurses involved (n=48) reported suffering from low back pain with moderate intensity (n=38), and the symptoms remained since the response to the questionnaire. Conclusions: With this study, we come to the conclusion that low back pain is particularly relevant in the nursing profession. Low back pain of nurses working in hospitals is non-specific and has mechanical characteristics. Risk factors related to the activity, present in the tasks performed, are the most important to the existence of low back pain. It is recommended to work on interventions that are based on the evaluation of prognostic factors for chronicity in order to avoid the unfavorable evolution of low back pain and to prevent the appearance of new cases.