Evaluation of an Educational Program for Nurses on Low Back Pain

Low back pains have adverse effects on the performance of nurses.  The article by Azize Karahan and Bayraktar entitled Effectiveness of an Education Program to Prevent Nurses’ Low Back Pain aims at assessing the efficiency of learning intervention programs that can reduce low back pain in nurses. The study was conducted in Bolu, Turkey among nurses before and after the education program. A comparison of the study results indicates that training nurses on how to improve on patients handling behaviors reduce low back pain. According to the authors training nurses on appropriate methods of dealing with patients enhances healthcare delivery (Karahan & Bayraktar, 2013). Improved healthcare delivery leads to healthy nurses because there is a significant reduction in cases of boredom, fatigue, and work-related stress.

The authors revealed that training improves knowledge, behavior, and experience of nurses in their workplace. From the study, nurse training improved the performance of nurses immediately after the exercise. However, after three months, the knowledge score decreased. It implies that the training must be done regularly to keep the nurses updated; hence, reducing low back pains.  Training that focuses on only body mechanics were found to be ineffective. According to the article, an appropriate training package must contain a combination of ergonomic arrangements, instrument handling, and patient lifting devices among other work-related measures (Karahan & Bayraktar, 2013). The compressive training with the named packages helps in reducing costs, work absenteeism, work lost due to injuries and low back pains among health practitioners. Nurses thus need to be trained on occupational risks, work preparedness, patient lifting devices, among other areas, which help in reducing back pains.

Healthy nurses without low back pains have improved work behavior compared to those with this problem. Nurses with no back pains found the training program ineffective though it improved on their work performance. The main disadvantage identified in the study was that it was difficult to eliminate long-term habits which lead to low back pains (Karahan & Bayraktar, 2013). Therefore, low back pain is a shared work phenomenon among nurse, and thus, appropriate training interventions were found beneficial in reducing the problem.

References

Karahan, A., & Bayraktar, N. (2013). Effectiveness of an Education Program to Prevent Nurses’ Low Back Pain: An Interventional Study in Turkey. Workplace Health & Safety, 61(2), 73-78. doi:10.3928/21650799-20130129-94