Prevalence and workload-related risk factors of neck-shoulder pain among nurses in Hunan tertiary general hospitals

Abstract

BackgroundNeck-shoulder pain is one of the most common discomfort symptoms among nursing staff, mostly caused by a heavy workload, restricted workstation, and prolonged poor posture.ObjectiveTo investigate the prevalence of neck-shoulder pain among nursing staff in tertiary general hospitals in Hunan Province, and to analyze workload-related risk factors.MethodsFrom October to December 2018, a multi-stage stratified randomized cluster sampling method was adopted to select a total of 1 200 nursing staff who met the inclusion andexclusion criteria in six tertiary general hospitals from five geographic subdivisions of Hunan Province were selected. A self-designed questionnaire was used to collect demographic characteristics, and past 1-month prevalence of neck-shoulder pain, a neck disability index (NDI) was used to assess the impact of neck pain on daily life, and functional disability was graded by the index of impaired neck function; a self-designed questionnaire was adopted to evaluate potential workload-related risk factors (working time, postural load, and force load) of neck-shoulder pain after a Delphi expert consultation. A total of 1 161 valid questionnaires were returned, and χ２test and logistic regression model were used to screen the potential risk factors for neck-shoulder pain.ResultsThe prevalence rate of neck-shoulder pain in the past 1 month was 87.5% (1 016/1 161) and varied by different characteristics of the nursing staff, ranging from 76.9% to 91.2%. The scores of the 10 items of the NDI ranged from 0 to 5, but most of them were 0, 1, and 2; of the 10 items, neck pain had the greatest impact on sleep (1.30±1.21) and the least impact on self-care behaviors (0.35±0.65). The index of impaired neck function showed that the majority (65.4%) of nurses had mild cervical spine dysfunction and 30.1% had moderate cervical spine dysfunction. The univariate analysis results revealed that 24 out of the 31 workload-related risk factors had significant differences, and further multiple analysis results showed that three variables entered the logistic regression model. Under the same conditions, nurses with ≥5 h of cumulative head-down tasks per shift had 3.03 times higher neck-shoulder pain risks compared with those with ＜1 h. Compared with “occasionally or never”, nurses who “sometimes” and “often” tilted their necks back and maintained this posture for a long time showed 2.36 and 2.94 times higher risks for neck-shoulder pain respectively. The nurses who reported “sometimes” and “often” having difficulty using their force at work due to unnatural posture had 2.78 times and 7.08 times higher neck-shoulder pain risks than those who “occasionally or never” respectively.ConclusionThe reported rate of neck-shoulder pain among nurses in tertiary general hospitals in Hunan Province is high, but most of them are mild dysfunction. Working hours and posture load may affect the risk of neck-shoulder pain.

Keywords

• nurse
• work-related musculoskeletal disorders
• neck-shoulder pain
• workload