A Survey of Factors Related to Perceived Disability in Nurses with Low Back Pain

Low back pain related disability is associated with many social and health consequences. Thus, identification of factors related with the complications is fundamental for planning of preventive interventions. Therefore, present study aimed to assess the factors related to perceived disability in nurses with low back working in the hospitals affiliated to Guilan University of Medical Sciences.
This analytic cross-sectional study was performed with participation of 55 eligible nurses with low back pain. Data were gathered by a 5-part tool including items about low back pain experience, demographic characteristics, work related risk factors, preventive behaviors, and modified Oswestry disability questionnaire through self-reporting method. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and inferential statistic tests (χ2, logistic regression-backward method) with SPSS (ver.21).
The majority of the subjects were in age group of 31-40 years old (47.3%) and most of them (41.8 %) had moderate disability. The majority of them were agreeing with ‘treating an excessive number of patients in a day’ (94.5%). In terms of job risk factors, 98.2% reported undesirable behavior about ‘warm up and stretch before duties’. Regression coefficients showed the predictive power of ‘reaching or working away from your body’ (B=-5.14, p=0.024) and ‘getting help for handling heavy patients’ (B=-4.24, p=0.02) for lower disability intensity; and higher age of subjects (B=4.09, p=0.008) for higher disability intensity.
Above results highlight the necessity of the managers’ special attention and intervention for lowering disability through the strategies such as nurses’ reeducation and better equipping the hospitals with proper lifting and transfer devices.