Musculoskeletal Injury In Nursing

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In the nursing profession, there is no shortage of musculoskeletal injuries in the workplace. Caring for individuals requires turning and lifting people of all ages and sizes. A workplace injury for a nurse is defined by Choi and Cramer (2016) as “any injury that is caused directly by performance of vital tasks in the process of care delivery to include patient/object handling.”
Rogers, Buckheit, and Ostendorf (2013) state that musculoskeletal injuries have been reported to make up about 43% of all nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses and that health care workers musculoskeletal injury rate was more than seven times the average national rate for all occupations. In 2009, registered nurses had the sixth highest rate of occupational musculoskeletal injuries (Rogers et al., 2013) The American Nurses Association (2011) conducted a Health and Safety Survey which showed that 62% of nurses reported that suffering a disabling musculoskeletal injury was among a top …show more content…

Rogers et al (2013) also state a key factor in nursing workplace injures is that around the age of 40 nurses begin to lose strength and mobility making it more difficult to handle patients physically. There are also several negative outcomes that occur because of workplace injuries in nurses. For example, 12% of nurses leave the profession annually secondary to occupational back injuries, cost total around $7.4 billion annually and the average workdays lost for RN’s with musculoskeletal injuries is 5 days per episode (Rogers et al.,

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