What is it about?

In recent years progress has been made related to Safe Patient Handling within the Healthcare Industry, but much work remains to continue to reduce risk to healthcare workers, and improve safety and quality of care for patients. Recently attention has been directed at exploring issues related to safe patient handling in the ambulatory care setting. As healthcare delivery evolves demands on ambulatory care will increase, and more dependent patients will be seen in ambulatory care clinics. Typically ambulatory care clinics are not equipped with appropriate safe patient handling equipment. An important piece of equipment in ambulatory care clinics is the examination table, and current fixed height examination tables are not easily accessible. A study was conducted to investigate the benefits of introducing new height adjustable height examination tables into the ambulatory care setting. The results of this study indicate that through the use of height adjustable examination tables, occupational risk to caregivers for suffering musculoskeletal injuries can be significantly reduced.

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Why is it important?

For more than 40 years, nurses have had the highest jobrelated injury rates of all healthcare personnel. In a 2011 survey conducted by the American Nurses Association: • 62% of nurses expressed concerns about experiencing a disabling musculoskeletal injury • 56% reported musculoskeletal pain caused or exacerbated by their work • 42% reported being injured at work at least once during a 12-month period • 52% reported chronic back pain • 38% said they’d had to take time off work due to occupation-related back pain • 20% said they’d changed their unit, position, or employment setting due to lower back pain

Perspectives

Results from this pilot study indicate that through application height adjustable examination tables, the difficult and high occupational risk activity of assisting a patient up onto an examination table can be made safer and easier for caregivers to perform. Caregivers reported that significantly lower perceived physical exertion was required to perform the task with a height adjustable examination table. Greater physical exertion to the caregiver equates to greater stress on the musculoskeletal structure and increased risk for injury This reduction in perceived physical exertion translates into less force exerted on the musculoskeletal structure and a lower risk of injury to the caregiver. As a result of facilitating the task of assisting a patient up onto an examination table, caregivers may be more likely to comply with protocols for examinations in ambulatory care settings. This may translate to improved quality of care for patients and positive outcomes related to a better experience for the patient when undergoing an examination. This study demonstrates how implementation of new examination table technology, employing the concepts of ergonomics, can improve the environment of care in the ambulatory care setting resulting in better outcomes for both patients and caregivers.

Dr. Guy Fragala
Patient Safety Center of Inquiry

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Reducing Occupational Risk to Ambulatory Caregivers, Workplace Health & Safety, September 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2165079916642776.
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