Lifting Training Doesn't Help Low Back Pain

All of us who work in NHS hospitals have a lot of mandatory training to do every year. It's part of our contracts and includes cardiopulmonary resuscitation, fire, child protection and manual handling.

There has been a big push to get manual handling training a higher profile and in our department no physiotherapist should touch a patient before they have this. Mainly this is for insurance liability reasons so the organisation can discharge its legal duties to the staff.

I've never been sure whether manual handling training prevents physiotherapists, or other staff, from developing low back pain. Yet it's always seen as "a good thing".

Now the British Medical Journal has published a paper by Martimo et al in the January 2008 issue which reviews research evidence whether training or advice reduces the incidence of low back pain conditions.

They conclude there is no evidence that advice, training and using lifting aids prevents low back pain or the disability from it.

It looks like there may be reasons for manual handling advice and care but preventing back pain may not be helped by this. We don't know enough about what stresses physiotherapists and nurses physically and how this translates into low back pain problems.

There's more about back pain at The Physiotherapy Site.