Nursing Best Practices for Safe Patient Handling keeps the patient and the nurse safe. 

Hospital Safe Patient Handling programs are under more pressure than ever before.  New challenges are causing nurses to have an increase in work related injuries of their shoulder, arm and back associated with patient handling.  This has a direct correlation to an:

• Increase in patient weights
• Aging nurse workforce
• Aging Population who need greater assistance in the hospital
• Increase in the % of older patients

In addition to these changes in the work environment, most states have policies and laws around Hospital patient and Health Care Worker Protection, such as California’s bill AB1136.  These laws often include rules for maintaining a safe patient handling policy, including training.  The key term there is “maintain.”  Simply implementing a program, purchasing some safe patient handling equipment and offering a one time training is not enough.

It isn’t enough to stay compliant and it isn’t enough to lower nurse injuries during patient handling.  So, the biggest question to answer is

How do we reduce the risk of injury?

And it begins with a facility assessment.  Once you know where you are, you can start to solve the problem and reduce the risk of nurse injuries.

That is why we are giving away 10 facility assessments with injury benchmarking.  Not only will you know where your risks are and how to fix them, you will also know how you measure up against other facilities.

Contact us here to request your facility assessment.