SOCIAL SUPPORT, JOB STRAIN AND MUSCULOSKELETAL PAIN AMONG FEMALE HEALTH-CARE PERSONNEL

Objectives This study explored the relationship between psychosocial w ork environment and the musculoskeletal pain among health care personn el. Materials and methods Ninety registered nurses and nurse's aides w orking in different hospitals in or just outside Stockholm and working in different kinds of care constituted the study group. Data were col lected by means of questionnaires, including questions about symptoms (low-back pain, pain in the neck, and pain in the shoulders), the perc eption of social support from co-workers and superiors, conflicts, fee lings of isolation, poor relations with superiors, psychological deman ds, authority over decisions, and skill utilization (job-strain factor s). Results An ordinal univariate logistic regression analysis showed that psychological demands, authority over decisions, skill utilizatio n, and support at work had a statistically significant effect on sympt oms from the lower back, while symptoms from the neck and shoulders we re related to support at work only. When support at work and job strai n were entered into a multivariate logistic regression model, a differ ence in the patterns of associations between low-back pain and symptom s from the neck and shoulders was found. Symptoms from the back were s ignificantly related to job strain - the higher the strain, the more s ymptoms in the low back. Symptoms from the neck and shoulders on the o ther hand were more associated with social support at work the lower t he support score the more severe the symptoms. Conclusions Low-back pa in seemed to be related to job strain, while symptoms from the neck an d shoulders were to a greater extent related to relational and emotion al factors.