Table 3.
Intensity and duration of chronic pain in total sample and by PSP category.a
| Total sample | Municipal/provincial police1 | RCMP2 | Corrections workers3 | Firefighters4 | Paramedics5 | Call center operators/dispatchers6 | F-value | Significant difference between PSP categories | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intensity, mean (SD)b,c score range 0 to 10 | |||||||||
| Lower back | 4.41 (2.24) | 4.65 (2.30) | 4.37 (2.19) | 4.77 (2.28) | 4.10 (2.14) | 4.07 (2.27) | 4.22 (1.98) | 3.210** | 5 < 3 |
| Shoulder | 3.64 (2.49) | 3.42 (2.70) | 3.94 (2.27) | 3.81 (2.73) | 3.83 (2.32) | 2.82 (2.23) | 4.61 (2.63) | 5.762*** | 5 < 2, 3, 4, 6 |
| Neck | 3.72 (2.57) | 3.74 (2.77) | 3.65 (2.56) | 4.36 (2.49) | 3.34 (2.57) | 3.18 (2.33) | 4.14 (2.20) | 3.654** | 4 < 3; 5 < 3 |
| Arm | 1.94 (2.52) | 1.78 (2.41) | 1.94 (2.60) | 2.24 (2.67) | 2.40 (2.65) | 1.29 (2.08) | 2.64 (2.71) | 2.385* | NS |
| Leg | 3.05 (2.77) | 3.16 (2.81) | 3.15 (2.78) | 3.24 (3.03) | 3.34 (2.60) | 2.27 (2.43) | 2.86 (2.78) | 2.052 (NS) | NS |
| Hand | 1.72 (2.29) | 1.64 (2.33) | 1.71 (2.24) | 2.29 (2.70) | 1.76 (2.11) | 1.09 (1.61) | 1.88 (2.46) | 2.549* | 5 < 3 |
| Foot | 2.31 (2.68) | 2.38 (2.78) | 2.42 (2.60) | 2.69 (2.94) | 2.30 (2.39) | 1.62 (2.36) | 1.91 (2.77) | 1.760 (NS) | NS |
| Headaches | 3.98 (3.16) | 4.21 (3.28) | 3.83 (2.97) | 4.52 (3.21) | 3.34 (3.10) | 3.65 (3.17) | 4.00 (3.30) | 1.949 (NS) | NS |
| Other | 3.89 (2.75) | 3.61 (3.01) | 3.78 (2.71) | 4.10 (3.03) | 3.88 (2.28) | 4.03 (2.50) | 4.94 (2.91) | 0.750 (NS) | NS |
| Duration, mean (SD)b,c days per week | |||||||||
| Lower back | 5.09 (2.19) | 5.16 (2.25) | 5.25 (2.14) | 5.06 (2.23) | 4.83 (2.25) | 4.97 (2.10) | 4.81 (2.23) | 1.005 (NS) | NS |
| Shoulder | 4.68 (2.60) | 4.53 (2.78) | 5.15 (2.39) | 4.72 (2.57) | 4.64 (2.46) | 4.00 (2.70) | 4.53 (2.69) | 3.544** | 5 < 2 |
| Neck | 4.55 (2.56) | 4.63 (2.57) | 4.62 (2.63) | 5.00 (2.31) | 4.19 (2.74) | 4.12 (2.63) | 4.47 (2.17) | 1.781 (NS) | NS |
| Arm | 3.03 (3.20) | 2.94 (3.15) | 3.00 (3.30) | 3.61 (3.13) | 3.67 (3.13) | 2.27 (3.00) | 2.83 (3.03) | 1.564 (NS) | NS |
| Leg | 4.25 (3.00) | 4.62 (2.91) | 4.22 (3.00) | 4.52 (3.12) | 4.26 (2.88) | 3.38 (3.01) | 4.32 (3.07) | 2.016 (NS) | 5 < 1 |
| Hand | 2.89 (3.09) | 2.81 (3.06) | 2.89 (3.20) | 3.44 (3.11) | 3.14 (3.18) | 2.29 (2.93) | 2.67 (2.70) | 1.043 (NS) | NS |
| Foot | 3.46 (3.22) | 3.67 (3.20) | 3.68 (3.28) | 3.72 (3.19) | 2.90 (3.10) | 2.88 (3.14) | 2.85 (3.27) | 1.291 (NS) | NS |
| Headaches | 2.42 (2.28) | 2.38 (2.32) | 2.49 (2.32) | 2.86 (2.31) | 2.13 (2.36) | 2.29 (2.22) | 1.69 (1.61) | 1.812 (NS) | NS |
| Other | 4.91 (2.65) | 5.20 (2.67) | 4.96 (2.66) | 4.20 (2.83) | 5.18 (2.44) | 4.92 (2.67) | 4.50 (2.50) | 0.895 (NS) | NS |
| Duration, mean (SD)b,c,d total number of months | |||||||||
| Lower back | 39.82 (37.87) | 40.71 (39.04) | 42.03 (38.80) | 37.12 (36.29) | 33.00 (34.02) | 43.03 (39.55) | 35.90 (31.79) | 1.435 (NS) | NS |
| Shoulder | 29.51 (33.13) | 25.64 (32.99) | 34.23 (34.15) | 30.24 (33.36) | 27.93 (33.47) | 26.15 (30.78) | 33.84 (32.08) | 1.643 (NS) | NS |
| Neck | 33.83 (36.05) | 32.78 (36.79) | 37.45 (37.66) | 32.71 (33.48) | 30.00 (33.77) | 30.34 (36.29) | 41.50 (35.38) | 1.066 (NS) | NS |
| Arm | 16.29 (28.24) | 16.33 (27.32) | 16.04 (28.29) | 16.15 (25.90) | 18.53 (35.55) | 15.23 (28.96) | 16.40 (23.09) | 0.073 (NS) | NS |
| Leg | 27.23 (33.63) | 29.49 (35.15) | 29.78 (34.69) | 27.09 (35.04) | 23.34 (27.24) | 22.88 (33.04) | 25.38 (33.31) | 0.782 (NS) | NS |
| Hand | 17.57 (30.19) | 16.85 (26.42) | 19.95 (34.01) | 19.93 (31.34) | 17.98 (32.43) | 11.57 (27.10) | 16.00 (21.93) | 0.704 (NS) | NS |
| Foot | 17.39 (26.71) | 18.20 (28.04) | 20.44 (29.20) | 15.34 (22.16) | 14.94 (23.76) | 14.18 (25.87) | 12.60 (22.50) | 0.942 (NS) | NS |
| Headaches | 28.53 (35.30) | 26.37 (32.13) | 30.24 (36.78) | 35.41 (37.28) | 20.19 (28.95) | 27.99 (36.75) | 25.45 (38.90) | 1.479 (NS) | NS |
| Other | 33.11 (36.09) | 26.84 (32.12) | 34.87 (38.55) | 24.06 (26.80) | 41.56 (38.33) | 39.96 (38.78) | 22.07 (30.88) | 1.926 (NS) | NS |
aPSP indicates public safety personnel; RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
bNonmutually exclusive chronic pain locations.
cOnly calculated for respondents who reported experiencing any chronic pain, more days than not, that lasted longer than 3 months.
dTo prevent outliers from skewing the mean, duration of months was limited to a range of a minimum of 0 months to a maximum of 150 months. This equated to removing the top 10% or less of the sample for each type of pain to calculate the mean and SD for the duration of months of pain.
Different numbered superscripts indicate that public safety personnel categories differ from one another at 0.05 only. NS = no significant differences between PSP categories. Differences across categories were tested using analyses of variance with Tukey’s honestly significant difference test for mean scores.
*P ≤ .05; **P ≤ .01; ***P ≤ .001.