Lift teams save nurses time
Less injury means fewer lost days
Should hospitals have experts in safe patient handling? The concept of special "lift teams" has been slow to gain favor. But hospitals around the country are beginning to adopt lift teams, and they are seeing results, says William Charney, DOH, a health and safety consultant based in Bellingham, WA, and a leading proponent of lift teams.
"There are two ways to get to zero lift," Charney says. "One is through lift teams. The other is to train your work force to use mechanical lifts."
In a 10-hospital study published in 1997, lift teams resulted in a 69% reduction in injury rates and a 90% reduction in lost days.1 Those teams had been in place from three to six years. Other hospitals are experiencing quicker results, Charney says. Five hospitals in the Kaiser Northern California group reduced patient-handling injuries in the nursing department by one-third last year after implementing lift teams, he says.
Nurses appreciate the lift teams because they not only reduce injuries, but they also allow them to focus more attention on caregiving, he says.
"[Patient transfer] takes about an hour per shift that can be given to bedside patient care," he says.
Too often, nurses fail to use ergonomic equipment, either because of inadequate training or time pressures. With lift teams, "You don’t have to train 1,000 nurses on zero lifts," Charney says. The training costs and training-release time away from work goes way down.
Here are some major points hospitals should consider when setting up lift teams, Charney advises:
• Assess your needs based on patient census and acuity. A hospital with 200 to 300 beds would probably need two lift teams that would cover 12 hours, seven days a week, he says. Few patient transfers occur during the overnight hours, and staff can be trained to use the lift equipment to handle those needs, he says.
• Purchase adequate equipment for the lift teams. These are not burly guys who will manually lift patients. "The nine most common [patient-handling] lifts exceed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health guidelines for lifting," for men or women, Charney notes. The key is having lift team members, whether men or women, who are well-trained and have the equipment necessary to reduce the risk of injury.
• Create new policies and procedures. What if nurses don’t wait for the lift team and perform lifts without help? "You have a written policy and procedure that mandates that nurses have to call the team," he says. That includes disciplinary notices if employees don’t follow the stated procedures, he adds. Meanwhile, supervisors must convince nurses that the time spent waiting for a lift team (usually 10 or so minutes) is far less than the time lost due to a back injury.
• Maintain a quality assurance program. Even with good policies, adequate equipment, and lift teams, someone may be injured in patient handling. A quality assurance (QA) task force should analyze problems as they occur and determine why an injury occurred, Charney says. "The biggest mistakes that hospitals make is that they don’t put the QA in it and they don’t train properly," he says.
[Editor’s note: For more information on lift teams, contact William Charney at (360) 527-1241.]
Reference
1. Charney W. The Lift team method for reducing back injuries: A 10 hospital study. AAOHN Journal 1997; 45:300-304.
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