Safe Handling: Preventing Patient Falls and Nursing Injuries

Course overview

Nursing is a high-risk occupation with respect to patient lifting and handling-related injuries. It is the profession most associated with work-related musculoskeletal disorders and injuries. Nearly 12 out of 100 nurses in hospitals and 18 out of 100 nurses working in nursing homes report work-related MSD injuries. Concurrently, frail older patients are at significant risk of suffering injurious falls during staff transfers from bed to wheelchair, toilet, chair, walker, or standing and back to bed. Despite awareness that manual patient handling is a high-hazard task and the promotion of training programs aimed at teaching nurses proper body mechanics, the incidence of MSD injuries persists at high rates, as does the incidence of dropped patients during staff lifts/transfers. The purpose of this course is to increase awareness of nursing and patient factors contributing to unsafe handling tasks and the use of mechanical equipment to support safe handling tasks. As well, guidance on achieving an effective safe patient handling program is discussed.