Using Measures of Biomechanics, Physical Activity, and Physical Fitness to Evaluate Risk of Law Back Pain in Nursing Students

Recent research has suggested that physical fitness, physical activity, and biomechanical factors relate to low back injury development. However, these works used established workers (including practicing nurses), making it difficult to identify potential predisposing characteristics that could be targeted in preventative efforts. Likewise, fourteen female nursing students were assessed using six biomechanical, two physical activity, and three physical fitness variables. Participants were grouped based on transient pain development, an established predictor of increased low back injury risk, during the 60 minute data collection. Transient pain developers (n=6) had reductions in some physical fitness and biomechanical variables (muscular strength, endurance, postural stability, and lumbopelvic control) but had no differences in any of the physical activity variables. These findings suggest improvements in physical fitness and/or the biomechanical variables have potential in nursing students to reduce their transient pain development, which may reduce their risk of developing a future low back injury.