Knee and low back complaints in professional hospital nurses: Occurrence, chronicity, care seeking and absenteeism

Objective: To investigate the relationships between physical, psychosocial, and individual characteristics and occurrence, chronicity, care seeking and absenteeism due to musculoskeletal complaints of the lower back and knee. Methods and Participants: This was a cross-sectional study among 350 nursing personnel in six hospitals in South-West Greece. Data related to physical and psychosocial workload, need for recovery, perceived general health and other risk factors for occurrence of low-back and knee complaints were collected. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated for all relevant risk factors. Results: Low-back and knee pain were reported by 51% and 23% of the subjects, respectively. A high perceived physical exertion and a moderate/bad perceived general health were the strongest risk factor for low-back and knee pain. With regard to care seeking a moderate/bad perceived general health was risk factor for both, low back and knee pain (OR = 3.45 and OR = 2.28; respectively). Perceived moderate/bad general health (OR = 2.90) and high need for recovery (OR = 2.78) were risk factors for absenteeism due to low-back pain, whereas organizational factors, high job demands (OR = 4.60) and low co workers support (OR = 3.13) for absenteeism due to knee pain. Age exhibited a positive relation with the disability and care seeking for both complaints although far stronger for knee. Conclusions: Compared to the well-studied work related low back pain, knee complaints have been shown to cause significant burden in nursing staff. Besides general health status of individual workers, work-related psychosocial factors, like support and demand, are related with the disability and care seeking for knee complaints.