Healthcare industry workers sustain 4.5 times more overexertion injuries than any other type of worker.
CDC state that 12% of nurses leave the profession because of back injuries sustained on the job!
Nurses even have their own Website called WINGS which stands for 'Work Injured Nurses Group' who have useful resources for trying to improve injury (mainly back injuries) sustained at work.
In the book Back Injury Among Healthcare Workers: Causes, Solutions, and Impacts (Charney and Hudson, CRC Press), many injured nurses and nurse assistants describe their individual post-injury plight of pain, poverty, and depression. All royalties from the book go to work-injured nurses, nurse assistants, and other healthcare workers as an effort to help in the face of staggering needs.
America Nurses Association have fact sheets which give advice on how to protect your back. No RN or healthcare worker should think it will never happen to them and should be prepared for the unexpected.
I know I suffer from chronic back problems and I worry when I am working the floor that should a patient collapse what should I do! I know I would find it extremely difficult to refuse to lift a patient but I know I will because I do not want to end up in a wheelchair at 50yrs old.
Handle With Care Fact Sheet
It may seem that Back problems/Chronic pain issues are not conjusive with working as an RN yet a large percentage of nurses actually work within the nursing field with these problems-more than anyone would actually believe.
So we should assume than unless we are the 20% who will never suffer a back injury( which we do not know if we are part of this group) that we will, if we dont already have a back injury, sustain a back injury at work.
We all have a responsibility to try and prevent such injury by being as informed as possible, protecting other healthcare workers as well as ourselves, and trying to persuade the powers that be in our healthcare facility to purchase manual handling equipment!.
So what choices do we have if we are part of the 80% group?
We are fortunate in nursing to have a profession which can take us from bedside to chair side with out actually changing our profession.
The hard part is finding what is available to RN's who suffer from such ailments!
Up until recently most potential nurses went into the profession to work as a bedside nurse, without giving much thought to working in other area's.
Now 'potential' student nurses are more informed and have greater ambitions of working in other area's once they qualify. This has angered a lot of seasoned nurses who feel that time served at the bedside should preempt career moves into more advanced positions because this is the way it was always done before. I myself used to believe that time served was the way forward but understand that there is always positiveness in change.
Change can be the stepping stone for many current and potential future RN's who suffer from back injuries, as more and more people enter the profession to bypass 'the old way' of time served, the more information presents itself of how we the back sufferers can envision our future. The 'greedy' universities who tempt anybody and everybody to do their courses by any means necessary can also educate us in the way we can nurse with imperfections and offer courses for everything connected to nursing.
All we need to do is tap into this great resource.
I often see threads about 'Bedside nursing is not for me' or 'Chronic pain sufferer where is my future in Nursing'
These threads are a wealth of information and are well worth reading as our members are a huge resource. Normally the members who respond with idea's have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, making these threads and members a wonderful resource to tap into.
Another good document I read during my research into back issues and nurses/healthcare workers can be found on the following link
Chapter 39. Personal Safety for Nurses
