Page 33
E R G O N O M I C
S A F E T Y
Suzy Harrington, DNP, RN, MCHES, director of the American Nurses Association's department of health, safety and wellness in Silver Spring, Md. Maybe the "little old lady" you're transferring from the stretcher to the OR table, or sliding back up in a PACU bed seems manageable, she says, "but in what other industry is 90 pounds considered light?"
Worse, the injuries that nurses and techs suffer may go ignored at length, because they're not always instantaneous traumas. Sometimes they're cumulative. "We're not just talking about the 600-pound-patient acute injury, but also about lifting and holding a 40-pound leg, about repetitive-motion-type injuries," says Ronda Fritz, RN, BSN, MA, the safe patient handling facility champion for the VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System in Omaha. Muscle microabrasions and spinal microfractures caused by unwise lifting may not be immediately apparent, but can build to a debilitating result. "If you go home from your shift aching and max out the ibuprofen or acetaminophen, that's a symptom," she says. "If you've got pain,
-------------------------------------
• Establish a culture of safety.
• Implement and sustain a safe patient handling and mobility (SPHM) program.
• Incorporate ergonomic design principles to provide a safe environment of care.
• Select, install, and maintain SPHM technology.
• Establish a system for education, training, and maintaining competence.
• Integrate patient-centered SPHM assessment, plan of care, and use of SPHM technology.
• Include SPHM in reasonable accommodation and post-injury return to work.
• Establish a comprehensive evaluation system.
Source: American Nurses Association's Safe Patient Handling and Mobility:
Interprofessional National Standards Across the Care Continuum
-----------------------------------
