The effect of an educational Intervention on low back pain preventive behavior among nursing students: A pre-posted designed study

Aims: Low Back Pain (LBP) is a costly, recurrent and prevalent health problem among nurses. This study aimed to explore the effect of a multidimensional education program on changing unhealthy behaviors of nurses. Instrument Methods: This pre-posted designed study was carried out on 34 nursing students. Interventional program was accomplished in a three-hour session, in which the participants were familiar with musculoskeletal system, the right postures of this system, occupational factors which may cause skeletal LBP, skills of doing back exercise behaviors. The second and third hour of this session mentally factors influencing on LBP, the ways and techniques to manage daily stresses as well as healthy social skills in lifetime were discussed. The demographic and behavior questionnaires were filled at pre and post intervention. The data were entered into SPSS and analyzed through the paired T-Test. Findings: Of 34 nursing students, 27 students with mean age of 22.44±2.76 completed the study. At 2- month follow up, the participants did back exercise significantly compared to initial of the study (p=0.003). Furthermore, keeping healthy posture of vertebra while walking and standing were significantly better than before intervention (p=0.001 and p=0.05 respectively). Conclusion: This study revealed that the educational intervention could be resulted in healthy behaviors of the nursing students to prevent LBP.