Low Back Pain in Italian Nurses: A Statistical Analysis of Disability and Work Productivity Impairment—An Observational Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Low back pain (LBP) is a common occupational health issue among nurses, significantly affecting quality of life and work productivity. Despite awareness, it remains a major cause of absenteeism and presenteeism, highlighting the need for targeted interventions. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of LBP among Italian nurses and its impact on quality of life and work productivity. Methods: A cross-sectional, multicenter observational study was conducted from May to October 2024 using an online questionnaire distributed to members of the Provincial Orders of Nursing Professions across Italy. The questionnaire included sociodemographic variables and three validated instruments: the Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale (QBPDS), the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), and the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire (WPAI). Results: A total of 318 nurses participated, with the majority from Southern Italy (57.1%) and female (74.6%). LBP was reported by 57.5% of respondents. Nurses working in Critical Care and those with 30–40 years of experience had significantly higher QBPDS and ODI scores, indicating moderate disability. Nurses working 12 h shifts and those with job restrictions or medical prescriptions reported significantly higher disability levels (ODI > 29, p < 0.001). Nurses on pharmacological therapy reported moderate pain levels, while those engaging in regular physical activity had significantly lower pain symptoms (<20, p < 0.001). The WPAI results showed that 67.0% of nurses reported impaired work productivity due to LBP. Conclusions: LBP is extremely prevalent among Italian nurses, especially affecting physical well-being and, accordingly, the health care quality provided by them. Factors exacerbating this problem are wrong manual handling of loads, not exercising, poor nutrition, and smoking, as well as wrong posture. Fundamental in order to avoid the occurrence of this problem are preventive programs and ergonomic training.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".