Objective To determine whether vaccination of care home staff against influenza indirectly protects residents.

Objective-To investigate the risk factors for low back pain in hospital nurses, with particular emphasis on the role of specific nursing activities. Methods-A cross sectional survey of 2405 nurses employed by a group of teaching hospitals was carried out. Self administered questionnaires were used to collect information about occupational activities, non-occupational risk factors for back symptoms, and history of low back pain. Results-The overall response rate was 69%. Among 1616 women, the lifetime prevalence of back pain was 60% and the one year period prevalence 45%. 10% had been absent from work because of back pain for a cumulative period exceeding four weeks. Rates in men were generally similar to those in women. In women back pain during the previous 12 months was weakly associated with height, and was significantly more common in those who reported frequent non-musculoskeletal symptoms such as headache and low mood. After adjustment for height and non-musculoskeletal symptoms, significant associations were found with frequency of manually moving patients around on the bed, manually transferring patients between bed and chair, and manually lifting patients from the floor. In contrast, no clear increase in risk was found in relation to transfer of patients with canvas and poles, manually lifting patients in and out of the bath, or lifting patients with mechanical aids. Confirmation of these findings is now being sought in a prospective study of the same population.Conclusions-This study confirms that low back pain is highly prevalent among nurses and is associated with a high level of sickness absence. People who often report non-musculoskeletal symptoms were significantly more likely to report low back pain. Specific manual handling tasks were associated with an increased risk of back pain; however, no such association was found with mechanised patient transfers. Each member of the study population was sent a postal questionnaire asking about various non-occupational risk factors for back complaints including age, height, reproductive history, and smoking habits; about frequency of certain non-musculoskeletal symptoms; about details of his or her current job, and about lifetime and recent history of low back pain. Non-responders were sent a single reminder after a month.The questions about non-musculoskeletal symptoms aimed to investigate whether psychological factors that influence reporting of other symptoms (particularly pain and psychological ill health) also affect the risk of reported low back pain. Subjects were asked to indicate how often (never, occasionally, or frequently) they experienced headaches, period pains, constant tiredness, low mood, and feeling tense or under stress.Occupational details included a self reported estimate of the number of times the subject performed each of a series of specified patient handling tasks per average shift (for full list of patient handling tasks see table 4).Low back pain was defined as pain lasting for longer than a day in an area (indicated in a...

Objective: To assess the impact of handling patients and indicators of individual susceptibility on risk of low back pain in nurses. Design: Prospective cohort study with follow up by repeated self administered questionnaires every three months over two years. Setting: NHS university hospitals trust. Subjects: 961 female nurses who had been free from low back pain for at least one month at the time of completing a baseline questionnaire. Main outcome measures: Incidence of new low back pain during follow up and of pain leading to absence from work.