Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

    Background & Aim: In the last decades, musculoskeletal disorders have increasingly become endemic. These disorders are the common cause of work-related disabilities among nurses. They are also considered to be highly important due to the enormous treatment costs and early retirements caused by them. In this respect, the present descriptive cross-sectional study was done to measure the incidence of nurses’ vertebral pains and determine the correlation between nurses’ personal characteristics and those complaints. 180 nurses working in Hamedan hospitals participated in this study. Patients & Method: For data collection, a questionnaire consisting of three parts was drawn upon. Part one and two were related to demographic and occupational characteristics respectively and part three contained pain scale measurement. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, statistical tests of Chi-square and t-student by SPSS(13) were used. Results: The samples who were all RN(Registered Nurses) included 32.8% men, 67.2% women, 38.9% single, 60% married, and 15.6% had a second job besides nursing. The study showed that while 48.9% of all participants had average knowledge of accurate principles of spine care, only 6.7% always applied them at work. In addition, the results showed that among 51.1% of the subjects who went through back pains at the start of their nursing professions, 51.1% felt the pains suddenly following an accident at work. Furthermore, 56.7% of the subjects suffered from at least one type of pains, of which the most common was low back pain. There was a statistically significant correlation between the existence of pain and applying accurate principles of spine care(P=0.029). Conclusion: Given that a high percentage of nurses suffer from a kind of vertebral pain, it is highly recommended that in order to solve these problems, the use of appropriate instruments for patient and heavy tools handling, regular exercises, and the effect of nurses’ intrinsic factors on vertebral complaints should be given priorities. Finally, to improve the quality of nursing care and general health, caring and planning are said to be the best strategy.