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weight restriction. They gave her a desk job, running
the OR schedule. "I could pick up the phone, but that's
about it," says Ms. Schuldt, who's now the OR clinical coordinator at Onslow.
This nasty spill happened to Ms. Schuldt 9 years ago. Her injuries have healed and Onslow's ORs have since been renovated and enlarged, but could such an accident happen at your facility?
How big of a problem are slips, trips and falls in ORs? Perhaps much bigger than you think.
Slips, trips and falls as a whole are the second most common cause of lost-workday injuries in hospitals, and were more likely to result in fractures and multiple injuries than were other types of workers' compensation claims, according to a 2011 OSHA study, "Slip, Trip and Fall Prevention for Healthcare Workers" (tinyurl.com/64yvyz3). Of the 379 facility managers we recently surveyed, 60% say a staff member or a surgeon has sustained an injury from slipping or falling in their ORs.
Why wait?
Yet many of the managers we surveyed about preventing OR falls ignore the problem and hope it goes away — until, that is, a surgeon or staff member hits the deck. Only after a slip, trip or fall do they take preventive action, be it covering cords, insisting on slip-resistant footwear or buying a fluid management device. This begs the question: Why wait?
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IT'S GOTTA BE THE SHOES
Footwear alone is not
adequate in preventing
slip-related accidents, but
non-skid shoes help.
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