Environmental Risk Assessment of Low Back Pain in ICU Nurses: An Instrument Development Study

To develop a valid, reliable assessment tool to measure risk factors associated to low back pain (LBP) in intensive care unit (ICU) nurses.

LBP is defined as the pain extending from the 12th rib to the iliac crest and often coexists with buttock pain. Nursing has been identified among the top professions at risk of LBP. A mean of 70% prevalence per year in ICU nurses was reported, exceeding those employed in heavy industry. Environmental factors in workplace were also most important risks related to LBP in this population except factors including individual, physical, psychosocial, and lifestyle. However, there is lack of tools to assess environmental risk related to LBP for nurse managers currently.

Focus group interviews, field research, and panel discussion were used to develop item pool. Two-round expert reviews and preinvestigation were carried out to form initial scale named Environmental Risk Assessing Instrument-Occupational Low Back Pain in Nurses (ERAI-N). A cross-sectional survey with 188 ICU participants in Hunan Province in China was implemented to collect data. Cronbach's alpha, split-half reliability, and test-retest reliability were used to test ERAI-N's reliability. Expert review was performed to test ERAI-N's content validity, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to assess its construct validity, being carried out in IBM SPSS Amos 26 Graphics.

Final version of ERAI-N scale had five dimensions with 18 items that were space, equipment, belief, guideline, and safe culture. ERAI-N scale's score of Cronbach's alpha, Guttman split-half, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.958, 0.927, and 0.994, respectively. Item-level content validity scores ranged from 0.89 to 1.0, and scale-level content validity was 0.983. Standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.567 to 0.974. Model adjusted fit statistics were as follows: the chi-square statistic and degrees of freedom (χ ²/df) = 3.943, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.071, incremental fit index (IFI) = 0.905, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.904, parsimony normed fit index (PNFI) = 0.641, and parsimonious comparative fit index (PCFI) = 0.661.

ERAI-N scale had moderate reliability, content validity, and construct validity. Implications for Nursing Management. Designers may use ERAI-N scale to plan the interior layout when design a new ICU. Nurse managers might utilize this instrument as a managing tool to assess whether there is environmental risk factors related to LBP in ICU.