Evaluating the training effectiveness for the ergonomic risks exposed by nurses while measuring blood pressure

Nurses, who account for the majority of the healthcare workforce in hospitals and constitute an important group in terms of continuity of service delivery, are in the risk group for musculoskeletal disorders. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the training given on the ergonomic risk analysis during blood pressure measurement, which is a repetitive movement performed by nurses several times throughout the day. The study was carried out with the participation of 64 nurses between September 2019 and May 2020 at Gaziantep University Şahinbey Research and Application Hospital. A pretest/posttest quasi-experimental was used in this study in which the experimental group and the control group were the same. The Nurse Descriptive Characteristics Form, Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) Form, and Extended Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire were used in the study. The data analysis was carried out using SPSS software package (21.0 version, IBM SPSS Inc. Canada). Of the nurses who participated in the study, 82.4% were women and 84.4% had a bachelor's degree. Their mean age was 35.79±5.04 years. It was found that 64.1% of the nurses did not do physical exercise and they had pain at different severities in all their anatomical regions, but the most common pain they experienced was the low back pain (71.9%). It was found that the nurses' mean REBA score was 5.79±1.08 before the training and this mean score decreased in (first- and third-month) observations after the training; so, the training was effective. A significant relationship was found to exist between the mean REBA score and the educational status, and it was observed that those who had a master's degree got higher REBA scores (p=0.049). It is recommended that nurses be given trainings on the awareness that they may experience musculoskeletal disorders depending on their job if they work in an improper posture, and they should be guided to follow exercise programs that will support their musculoskeletal system.