New ANA Ergonomics Brochure Outlines How to Adopt a Successful Safe-Patient-Handling Program
As part of the ongoing ANA Handle With Care campaign, ANA is excited to offer a new Handle With Care brochure in an online PDF file format as a resource guide and teaching tool to assist nurses as well as hospital managers and administrators in preventing work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The brochure was produced in cooperation with the Patient Safety Center of Inquiry, Veterans Health Administration in Tampa, FL, and is supported by a grant from Johnson & Johnson.
Nurses have long suffered from back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders that result primarily from lifting, transferring, and repositioning patients by using manual techniques and so-called "proper body mechanics." However, research now clearly shows that these methods do not equip nurses to safely perform patient handling activities.
The good news is that technologic and programmatic solutions now exist that will make back injuries and MSDs an issue of the past. Throughout the health care industry, hospitals and health systems are beginning to adopt safe patient handling programs that incorporate lifting equipment and transfer devices. And this brochure - along with the accompanying educational CD - highlights some of those success stories.
Through a step-by-step process, the Handle with Care brochure outlines the problem of back injuries and MSDs in nursing and other health care occupations, discusses how these debilitating and often disabling injuries can be avoided - through the increased use of assistive lifting and transfer devices - and reveals, in actual dollars and cents, the tremendous cost-savings achieved by facilities that have instituted "no-lift" policies.
To find out more about the Handle with Care campaign, visit Handle With Care Campaign.