The Prevalence of Low Back Pain among a Group of Turkish Nurses

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of low back pain among Turkish nurses working in a private hospital in the city of Bursa and to compare demographic data. The study comprised 188 nurses; 150 females and 38 males. For data collection, a socio-demographic questionnaire and the Oswestry Low Back Pain Questionnaire were used. Data were evaluated using the T-Test, Pearson Correlation and One-Way Anova analysis. The results of this study revealed that in 60 % of respondents the degree of back pain did not cause problems in daily living, 34 % experienced low back pain in everyday life with mild restrictions and 6 % of participants were greatly affected by low back pain in everyday life. No participants experienced back pain at the two highest levels of the measurement scale. The average level of back pain was scored at 18.24 on the Oswestry Pain scale. No statistically significant difference was determined between the groups in respect of gender, marital status, education, department, time of pain occurrence and average pain questionnaire scores (p greater than0.05). However, a positive correlation was found between back pain and the number of working years (p