Back pain/back injury in nurses

Back pain and back injury in nurses is a pretty big deal that I don’t think gets enough attention. Nurses are at an increased risk of experiencing back pain and injury due to the environment in which they work.

Nurses are on their feet for 8-12 hours at a time and often care for patients who require a total level of care. Providing total care for a patient can be difficult and if the patient is obese, there is an increased chance that the nurse will experience some sort of strain in their body.

I have personally been experiencing back pain since I was in nursing school. I have had many shifts where I have come home and wanted to cry big tears because of how much my back hurt.

I knew that experiencing that kind of back pain is not sustainable, so I started implementing some measures to help decrease the back strain I experience as well as preventing back injury while at work.

I will be sharing with you my tips for preventing back pain and back injury while working as a nurse in hopes to help you prevent back pain and injury.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, I make a commission if you use any of the affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Body mechanics

I will admit that this is one of those “easier said than done” situations. It is all fine and dandy to know how to use good body mechanics, but it is a totally separate thing to actually implement the good body mechanics.

I remember in nursing school we had to read about good body mechanics and we also did a skills lab where we practiced using good body mechanics while repositioning and transferring patients. However, like many skills in nursing, it is a very different experience practicing in the lab and implementing the skill in the clinical setting.

We are often in a rush or do not have adequate clinical staff to assist and we end up compromising our bodies by using poor body mechanics. I have, unfortunately, repositioned and transferred many patients by myself when I should have called for assistance from a coworker.

Over the years I have noticed that there are certain tasks that we perform as nurses that can cause back strain in a very sneaky way.

One of the easiest ways to prevent these tasks from causing back pain is by raising the bed of the patient to waist height.

We all know we should do this while repositioning patients, but the following tasks should follow the same rules.
Raise the bed of the patient to waist level in the following situations:

• Taking vital signs
• Administering IV & PO medications
• Changing wound dressings
• Providing peri care/brief changes
• Providing oral care/trach care
• Providing a bedbath

This simple change will prevent you from leaning over your patient and straining your back.

You can also check out these websites that list out the nitty-gritty of proper body mechanics in nursing.

Proper Body Mechanics by NurseLabs.com

Ergonomic Principles: NCLEX-RN by RegisteredNursing.com

Follow those guidelines to ensure you are using proper body mechanics while working as a nurse. They could save your back!

Back brace

I mentioned how much I love using a back brace in my “Must Haves for Nurses” and I’m mentioning it gain here since it is relevant.

Wearing a back brace serves two functions:

1. Provides back support

2. Encourages use of good body mechanics

The back brace I use can be discreetly worn under loose fitting scrubs, so no one even knows when I wear it.

A back brace can also be useful to have on hand if you get a heavy assignment that includes a lot of total care patients. You can bust out the brace to help support your back while repositioning and transferring total care patients.

Exercise and stretches

A great way to prevent back pain is by exercising and stretching regularly.

An important note to make is that exercising will also require the use of proper body mechanics and form. You could potentially make back pain worse if you do not use good form when exercising.

With that said, exercising can help strengthen your back muscles and abdominal muscles which will help reduce the risk of back strain and injury.

Yoga can be a great, low-impact exercise to help strengthen your back and core.

If you find that you still experience back pain even after using the tips in this post, then you can do back stretches to help ease the back the pain. This lower back stretching routine from HASFit is one of my favorites to use.

My back immediately feels relief after I complete this routine.

TENS unit

A great way to relieve back pain is utilize a TENS unit 1-2 daily in the affected area.

I can’t describe how amazing it feels to use this on my back when I have been experiencing a lot of back pain.

This is the unit that I use and love.

You really can’t go wrong with one of these. Thankfully, they aren’t even very expensive.

Check out this article for more information about how TENS units work and their benefits if you are unfamiliar with them.

It is of the utmost importance to try to protect your back while working as a nurse to ensure that your career does not end prematurely due to chronic back pain or a back injury.

I hope that the information in this post gave you some insight of how to prevent and deal with back pain while working as a nurse.

As always, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or you just want to talk.

Happy Nursing!