Abstract:
Background: Globally, low back pain is widespread problem among nurses. It is largely contributed
to activity limitation and absenteeism from work. The global prevalence of low back pain among
nurses’ ranges from 28% to 86%. Reported prevalence of low back pain in Ethiopia ranges from
45.8% to 70.9% which is generated from insufficient sample size. Epidemiologically reliable
prevalence and associated factors of low back pain is not well studied in study area. Thus, this study
tried to identify the prevalence and factors associated with low back pain among nurses.
Methods and materials: Hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly
selected 404 nurses working in public hospitals of Harari Region and Dire Dawa City
Administration. Standardized and pre-tested Nordic musculoskeletal and other questionnaire was
used to collect data. Data was collected by trained data collectors, checked for errors, entered into
Epi-data version 3.1, cleaned, exported to SPSS version 22 and then cleaned, recoded and analyzed.
All covariates that were significant at p value < 0.25 in bivariate logistic regression analysis were
considered for further multivariable logistic regression analysis. Multico-linearity test was carried
out by co-linearity statistics (VIF). The direction and strength of statistical association was measured
by odd ratio with 95%CI. Finally, statistical significance was declared at p-value < 0.05.
Results: A total of 404 nurses responded to this study and yielded 96.4% response rate. The 12-
month prevalence of low back pain was found to be 38.1% (95%CI: 33%-43%) and the point
prevalence was 36.4 %. It is more prevalent among females (65%). More than 5 years of experience
(AOR=3.135; 95%CI (1.292-7.605), manual lifting of heavy weight > 10kg (AOR=5.260; 95%CI
(1.869-14.805) and working in awkward posture (AOR=3.93; 95%CI (1.109-13.924), were variables
significantly associated with low back pain.
Conclusion: About 2/5th of nurses working in public hospitals of Harari Region and Dire Dawa City
Administration are suffering with low back pain. In association with their back pain 40% of nurses
have the intention to change their profession. This could fuel up the burden of nurse human resource
shortage. Long duration of working experience, lifting heavy weight >10kg manually and working in
awkward posture are important factors that contributed to occurrence of low back pain. These
modifiable risk factors can be prevented through tailored intervention.
