Teaching program for patients with low-back pain

Sometime during their lives, four out of five adults will suffer from back pain. A health problem with such a profound physical and emotional impact has wide-reaching implications for nursing. The nursing process was applied to address the needs of low-back pain patients on a 48-bed neurosurgery-general surgery ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Patient needs were assessed by distributing 170 questionnaires over a nine-month period. Ninety-seven were returned, a 57% return rate. Using the results, we developed a nursing care plan, including nursing diagnoses, expected outcomes, and nursing interventions. Based on the care plan, 12 written teaching modules were developed, which took a multidisciplinary approach to this chronic problem.