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Aims: Back pain and neck/shoulder pain are common among nurses. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between nurses' exposure to a demanding psychosocial work environment during the first three years after graduation and the occurrence of severe back pain and neck/shoulder pain in the longer term, 11–15 years later. Methods: The Longitudinal Analysis of Nursing Education (LANE) study (nursing graduates from 26 Swedish universities in the years 2002, 2004 and 2006) was used to create two risk cohorts of nurses not reporting severe back pain (n =1764) or neck/shoulder pain (n =1707). Nurses exposed to a demanding psychosocial work environment for one, two or three of the first three years in their career were compared to nurses not having a demanding psychosocial work environment for any of these three years regarding the incidence of severe back pain or neck/shoulder pain at follow-up, 11–15 years later. Relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using binomial regression. Results: The RR (95% CI) of having severe back pain for nurses who had a demanding psychosocial work environment for one of the three years was 1.36 (0.82–2.28) and 2.08 (1.21–3.57) for two of the three years and 2.82 (1.43–5.55) for all three years. Corresponding RRs (95% CIs) for severe neck/shoulder pain were 1.35 (0.87–2.10), 1.49 (0.88–2.51) and 1.41 (0.62–3.20), respectively. Conclusions: Nurses who were repeatedly exposed to a demanding psychosocial work environment early in their career reported severe back pain to a higher extent in the longer term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Previous research shows that sleep quality may interact with some other predictors of depression, such that poor sleep could strengthen the association between these factors and depression. We aimed to determine the presence of statistical interactions between sleep quality and loneliness, risky alcohol use, perfectionistic concerns and/or physical inactivity in relation to depressive symptoms. Further, we aimed to describe the functional form of the statistical interactions and associations. We used a cross‐sectional design and included 4262 Swedish university students. All measures were self‐reported, sleep quality was measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and depressive symptoms with the short‐form Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale. Regression models of increasing complexity (linear and non‐linear, with and without interactions) were compared to determine the presence of associations and statistical interactions, and to explore the best functional form for these associations and interactions. Out‐of‐sample R2 from repeated cross‐validation was used to select the final models. We found that sleep quality was associated with depressive symptoms in all final models. Sleep quality showed a linear interaction with perfectionistic concerns in relation to depressive symptoms, such that perfectionistic concerns were more strongly associated with depressive symptoms when sleep quality was poor. Loneliness, risky alcohol use and physical inactivity were non‐linearly associated with depressive symptoms but did not interact with sleep quality. We concluded that out of the four examined variables, only perfectionistic concerns interacted with sleep quality in relation to depressive symptoms. This interaction was weak and explained little of the overall variance in depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]