Chronic Low Back Pain and Disability among Nurses: A Cross Sectional Study from Bam, Iran

Background: Although Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP) rarely threatens the humans’ lives, those individuals suffering from such pain experience a variety of health-related problems and difficulties such as physical disability. This study aimed to determine the relationship between low back pain and physical disability among nurses working in Pastor Hospital of Bam, Kerman, Iran. Material and Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted among nurses and paramedics who suffering from chronic low back pain and working in Pastor Hospital in Agu, 2015. Through randomly sampling, 120 eligible individuals were recruited of which 104 individuals were satisfied to enter to the study. The standard tools of Owsestry Disability Index (ODI) and Visual Analog Scale (Vas) as well as demographic questionnaire were used to collect data. The SPSS software, version 18 was used to analyze the data. Results: In all, 104 participants with mean age of 34.7 ± 8.9 were assessed. The majority of theparticipants (N = 90, 86.5%) were female. There were significant association between functional disability and low back pain intensity (P < 0.001). Furthermore, Pearson correlation showed that there were significant positive relationship between duration of back pain and disability (P < 0.001). Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the chronic low back pains among nurses were related to their disability. Therefore, it seems to improving low back pain among this target group can be an effective step to improve their physical function in their workplaces.

Keywords:

Disability , Nurses , Chronic low back pain