Prevalence of Back Pain among Nurses in a Private Hospital in Klang Valley, Malaysia

Background: Back pain is one of the most frequent health problems directly related to working environment, affected majority of healthcare provider especially nurses. Repeated bedside nursing tasks while handling patients with prolonged standing increase risks for nurses to develop low back pain in long term career path. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of back pain among nurses in a private hospital in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a selected private hospital involving 217 respondents who fulfilled inclusion criteria. Results: Findings indicated respondents’ mean and standard deviation of total back pain (17.78 ± 4.026); total work characteristic (20.92 ± 4.341) and psychosocial factors (11.93 ± 2.602) with the total score as moderate (50.63 ± 7.853). There were no significant differences between participants’ age, marital status, number of children and period of service. However, sub-score of psychosocial factors in female participants reported significant differences (t = - 2.328; p value = 0.021). Conclusion: Majority of the nurses reported a moderate level of low back pain. Age, marital status and number of children do not implicate the occurrence of low back pain. However, result show that total score for the years of working experience of the respondents which more than 5 years of working experience were more compared to those with less than 5 years of working experience. Apart from all the insignificant, females were significantly shown in psychosocial factors in which impacted total score of females and became higher than the participants’ of male.