Lived Experience of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Pain among Emergency Nurses in Sarawak: A Heideggerian Phenomenological Study

Background: To explore the lived experience of work-related musculoskeletal pain among emergency nurses at Sarawak General Hospital, to examine the perceived contributing factors to that pain, and to describe the coping strategies used to manage it. Methods: The study employed an interpretive Heideggerian phenomenological design guided by Van Manen’s hermeneutic approach. A purposive sample of 12 emergency nurses with self-reported work-related musculoskeletal pain participated in semi-structured, in-depth individual interviews. Interviews were conducted in Sarawakian Malay according to nurses’ preferences, audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed manually using lifeworld-oriented thematic interpretation. Results: Work-related musculoskeletal pain was experienced as more than a physical symptom. It emerged as an embodied disruption affecting movement, posture, comfort, stamina, and daily functioning. Pain was commonly normalised as part of nursing work and often endured silently to maintain professional responsibility and patient care. Nurses linked pain to repetitive patient handling, prolonged standing, awkward posture, understaffing, workload pressure, shift demands, and limited recovery opportunities. Although nurses used coping strategies such as rest, analgesics, stretching, self-massage, and endurance-based-self-management, these measures were temporary and inadequate to address the ongoing conditions sustaining pain. Four themes generated from this study: pain as an embodied disruption to work and daily functioning, pain was normalised and silenced as part of being a nurse, organisational and work process factors intensified pain and coping was necessary but often temporary and insufficient. Conclusion: Work-related musculoskeletal pain among emergency nurses should be understood as an embodied and organisationally shaped occupational burden rather than individual physical complaint alone. Meaningful prevention requires system-level responses, including safe staffing, ergonomic support, recovery-enabling work design, and accessible occupational health measures.