#0091 Walking at work: Maximum gait speed is related to work ability in hospital nursing staff
Gait speeds predict nurses’ work ability scores
The median age of nurses in the United States currently stands at 53 years, and this has led some scholars to voice concerns about deterioration of physical functioning within the nursing workforce. Given the vital role that nurses play in providing healthcare within the hospital setting, this is a matter of serious concern.
One simple and objective way to quantify a person’s general fitness is to measure that individual’s gait speed, which is the speed with which a person walks over a level surface. Past studies have shown that gait speed is a strong predictor of physical functioning and disability in older adults, and we hypothesized that it may also correlate with work abilities in older adults employed as nurses.
To test our hypothesis, we conducted a study involving 312 nurses and nursing assistants who provided inpatient care at a trauma center. We recorded each participant’s gait speed over a 10-meter distance, and we assessed work ability levels with a question from the Work Ability Index, which is predictive of long-term sickness and work absence outcomes. We also recorded body mass index values, which reflect whether a person is overweight.
In our report published in the Journal of Occupational Health, we noted that nurses with greater maximum gait speeds also had better work ability scores. Nurses with maximum gait speeds that placed them in the lowest tertile were more likely to have work ability scores in the poor-to-moderate range than faster nurses were, and nurses with top-tertile maximum gait speeds were more likely to have good-to-excellent work ability scores than slower nurses were. Unsurprisingly, nurses with body mass index values indicative of overweightness had slower maximum gait speeds and poorer work ability scores.
Our findings suggest that gait speed can serve as a convenient tool for assessing a nurse’s work ability and that gait speed improvements may be appropriate targets for efforts to promote the health and wellness of nurses. Given the simplicity of the 10-meter walking test, our findings may have broad translatability to other occupations.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1348-9585.12171
Title of the paper:
Walking at work: Maximum gait speed is related to work ability in hospital nursing staff
Authors:
Chad Aldridge, Victor Tringali, Robert Rhodes, Kohl Kershisnik, Debra Creditt, Jorge Gonzalez-Mejia, Jose Lugo-Vargas, Jean Eby
