Strategies for Reducing Lower Back Pain in Nursing Professionals

This presentation addresses the significant issue of lower back pain among nurses, highlighting its prevalence and impact on the healthcare industry. It explores the causes of this problem, including the physical demands of patient handling and the use of hospital equipment. The presentation emphasizes the importance of ergonomic education as a key intervention strategy to mitigate lower back pain, detailing how it can improve nurses' postures and techniques. It also underscores the crucial roles of various stakeholders, such as physiotherapists and hospital authorities, in implementing and supporting ergonomic practices. The presentation concludes by advocating for policies that mandate ergonomic education within nursing programs to ensure both the safety of nurses and the quality of patient care.

Slide 1:
Title
Slide 2:
Nursing profession is quite challenging and nurses face several difficulties in their workplaces which
affect their health. Lower back pain is one of such issues which lead to poor quality of care as well.
Nurses from all over the world suffer from such issue in Australia also, nurses face challenges
regarding lower back pain. Even, some studies revealed that such health issue is responsible for the
absenteeism of the nurses and it is most concerning for the healthcare industries. Nurses are very
close to the patients and also provide constant support to them and due to this purpose. They are
more likely to suffer from lower back pain than any other healthcare professionals. Stakeholders
associated with it play an effective role in mitigating the risks.
Slide 3:
In order to prevent the prevalence of lower back pain among the nurses, various intervention
strategies can be taken. Integration of ergonomic education to the nurses can be one of the effective
interventions. Ergonomics is a scientific discipline which addresses human being in the environment
to facilitate human wellbeing. Nurses as a stakeholder, should always include the principle of
ergonomics for the safe of their personal as well as professional care. Safe use of body and safe
patient handling can protect the nurses from different physical injuries. Even, it can also mitigate the
risk of lower back pain among them. Therefore, the support of nurses as a stakeholder is necessary.
Slide 4:
Different reasons are there behind the prevalence of lower back pain among the nurses. It has been
identified in different studies that due to persistent as well as repeated patient lifting, nurses suffer
from physiological issues that include lower back pain. Also, transferring of the patient combined
with some physical restrictions also causes lower back pain and nurses are the worst sufferers as
they need to fulfil such heavy responsibilities at their workplace. Again, some other studies indicated
that poor ergonomics of hospital equipments causes physiological stress like lower back pain among
the nurses while working in the clinical settings. Hospital authority as a stakeholder should hire
more staffs and managers as a stakeholder should revise he infrastructure and hospital equipments
in this purpose.
Slide 5:
Educating the nurses about the ergonomic education is an effective strategy to reduce the
prevalence of lower back pain. It has been identified in many studies that physiotherapists can
provide sufficient support to the nurses in this regard. Physiotherapists can show some effective
postures and techniques of handling patients while lifting or transferring them. It can help the nurses
in avoid back pain and other physical injuries. Also, designing the workplace ergonomics with
equipments is another important task in which hospital authority can play the role of stakeholders.
These stakeholders play major role in mitigating risk of lower back pain and introducing ergonomic
education to the nurses.

Slide 6:
Nurses are crucial in health and they perform various duties to maintain the safety of the patients.
Therefore, ensuring the safety of the nurses should also be the foremost priority to maintain the
quality of care. Introducing the ergonomic education can be an effective strategy in ensuring the safe
handling of the patient as well as the correct posture of the nurses. In this presentation, the reasons
behind lower back pain have been identified. Also, importance of the integration of ergonomic
education has been stated along with the role of various stakeholders in this regard. Hospital
authority in collaboration with government should implement policies to mandate the integration of
ergonomic education in nursing education.