Nurses: Protect your backs

I worked as a bedside RN for 10 years before becoming a NP. Not many people ask why I became a NP (seems obvious, right?), but when they do, I often don’t tell the truth. The single biggest motivator for my career change was my poor, aching back.

I injured my back many times over my career. I am at high risk for back injury: I am tall, with a long torso, and also slightly crooked. My back hurt before I went into bedside nursing, so I was an accident waiting to happen.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, being at the bedside requires long hours on your feet, assisting patients out of bed while you are in an awkward position, and turning and re positioning patients. Providing meticulous hygiene to my patients often meant I would spent 10-20 minutes bent over, sometimes contorting into unimaginable positions. After a few memorable incidents, I was left with an annoying radiating pain down into my right leg. Some work injuries left me couch or bedbound for a day or so.

Eventually, with lots of stretching and regular exercise, I got to a point where it was manageable. However, since I left the bedside in August, I feel like a have a new body. Yes, I still ache sometimes, but my new rather sedentary job isn’t exactly injury provoking.

I spent a lot of time reading about back injuries and nursing. Do we just chalk it up to part of the job? Every year, we were reminded of good body mechanics. “Bend with your knees, not your back,” “lift with your legs”, “don’t bend and twist at the same time”. Any bedside nurse knows that we do this every single day.

I am not convinced that employing good body mechanics is enough, and the American Nurses Association and other nursing bodies agree with me. What we really need are lift devices, which are devices that do the hard work for you. Barriers to implementing this strategy include cost and the myth that good body mechanics are enough to prevent injury. Additionally, these devices are not perfect. They could potentially cause injury if not used correctly.

The culture of healthcare dictates that patients who are hospitalized are sicker than they ever were. This demands good nursing care, and nurses deserve the equipment they need to do their jobs effectively.

What can you do? Get informed, spread the word, ask your administrators: it’s worth a shot!