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GREENSBORO - Even healers may need to be healed.

Now, three UNCG professors are studying how often registered nurses have health problems and what the problems might mean for patient care.

The research may improve the current medical environment. Nursing shortages are growing and nurses are aging. Hospital nurses also work with, in general, sicker - and, with the increasing incidence of obesity, heavier - patients than has been the case in past years.

Susan Letvak, an associate professor in UNCG's school of nursing, got interested in the subject years ago as she watched what happened to older nurses. Often, she said, skeletomuscular injuries forced nurses out of the profession.

Such injuries are "probably one of the most frequent causes of absenteeism or nurses coming to work with restrictions," said Joan Wessman, the chief nursing officer at Moses Cone Health System. "Maybe they can't lift over 20 pounds or they can't twist or turn their body."

Wessman is not connected with the study.

Cone has installed devices in its hospitals that let nurses turn patients more easily. "It was a significant expense, but we have seen a marked reduction in injuries," she said.

Using a $5,000 UNCG grant, Letvak created a pilot study of 14 nurses. More than half, she said, reported both skeletomuscular injuries and depression, which could have been linked to chronic pain from injuries.

That pilot already has helped her win a $264,106 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which finances health initiatives. Her grant is among only eight nationwide.

Letvak will send a questionnaire to 2,500 randomly selected registered nurses at North Carolina hospitals. The survey targets hospital nurses because hospitals are where patients are sickest and the profession is most concerned about quality and errors.

The questionnaire asks nurses about their own physical and mental well-being. It also asks about patient care, such as how often a patient under the nurse's care has fallen or experienced a medication error in the past 14 days.

The data will be analyzed by Christopher Ruhm, a health economist in UNCG's Bryan School of Business and Economics, and Sat Gupta, director of UNCG's statistics division. The grant requires studies to be interdisciplinary.

They expect to find that nurses with health problems may not only affect patient care but also cost hospitals money.

Letvak sees the issue as key to retaining experienced nurses, of whom supply already lags behind demand.

The average age of a nurse is 46.5 years, she said, not only because the profession is aging but also because many people don't become nurses until their 30s.

Now, many nurses are quitting before retirement because they can no longer do the work. The profession is expecting up to a 20 percent shortage of nurses by 2020.

"Just putting out new nurses isn't the answer," Letvak said. "We need to hang onto experienced nurses. There is no price tag on experience."

Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lex.alexander@news-record.com