Prevalence of low back pain and its related factors among pre-hospital emergency personnel in Iran

Objective: Low back pain is one of the most important job injuries among emergency medical personnel. This study was carried out to investigate the prevalence of low back pain as well as its physical, mental and managerial predisposing factors among emergency medical personnel in Iran. Methods: In this analytical cross-sectional study we recruited 298 pre-hospital emergency medical personnel based on census sampling. Data were gathered using Nordic and a research-made questionnaire related to physical, mental and managerial back pain factors. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive and analytical tests including chi-square test were used appropriately. P value less than 0.05 was considered as the level of significance. Results: Findings showed that 46.3% of pre- hospital emergency technicians had a history of low back pain with different intensities. We observed a significant relationship between age, work experience, occupational-physical factors with low back pain (P > 0.001). However, there was no significant relationship between occupational-managerial factors and mental-occupational factors with low back pain (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Results show that the prevalence of back pain among emergency medical personnel is high. Identifying the factors associated with back pain can help the managers as well as the personnel to control the problem of back pain and increase employees’ productivity.