Nurses and Back Pain / Sciatica

 
While nurses work hard to relieve pain in others, nurses with back pain and or sciatica are more prevalent than workers in most other professions. Nursing and back pain have become nearly synonymous as one study places the lifetime risk of lower back pain for nurses as high as 90%.

One of the root causes behind nurses with back pain / sciatica is the amount of required lifting, often without adequate assistance. For example, when tending unconscious patients, nurses will attempt to turn him over every couple of hours to prevent bed sores. Nurses may need to turn multiple patients over several times each in a single shift. This type of lifting has led to very high percentages of nurses with back pain. 

Back pain relief for nurses seems difficult to come by as mechanical lifting devices are available less than 20% of the time. Facilities are often short-staffed, meaning nurses may have to move patients unaided. Making matters worse, nurses frequently have to move furniture out of the way just to do their jobs in the cramped environment of a typical hospital room. 

According to one recent study on nursing and back pain, at some point during their careers, debilitating lower back pain will affect 58% of ICU nurses and 65% of orthopedic nurses. With back pain cases where the work absence is greater than six months creating 70% of worker compensation costs, back pain relief for nurses should become a front burner issue for healthcare facilities. 

A significant reduction in the number of nurses with back pain could be accomplished in two steps. First, healthcare facilities can hire more staff to share the workload of lifting and moving patients. Second, increasing the average room size so nurses can work unimpeded will reduce lifting and moving while increasing efficiency. 

Educating nurses in how to prevent lower back injuries in the workplace along with improving working conditions will allow healthcare facilities to realize significant savings in worker compensation costs as well as provide a better working environment for nurses. Thus creating a real win-win situation, where back pain relief for nurses comes from preventing back injuries in the first place. 

If you are a nurse and you suffer from back pain and or sciatica, you should read more about effective treatments for sciatica and back pains