Musculoskeletal injuries related to resident handling are the number one cause of injury in long term care. Back strains alone account for 30% of all work-related injuries reported; other strains account for 44%.

Studies have clearly demonstrated that injury rates among care workers can be significantly reduced by increasing the use of mechanical lifts and restricting manual resident handling by care workers^2,3,4. Moreover, studies looking at the manual lifting of residents have found that the effort required to do so routinely exceeds care workers biomechanical capacities^2,5,6.

In addition to this, transitioning from a manual to lift-based transfer system is safer and more comfortable for residents and is associated with fewer violent or aggressive resident behaviour incidents^1,3. Safe Resident Handling policies can reduce the risk the musculoskeletal injuries by establishing a ‘no-lift’ approach as the standard operating procedure.

References:

¹ SafeCare BC (2015). SafeCare BC Members – Injury Trends Profile by Organization Size.

² Collins, J., Wolf, L., Bell, J., Evanoff, B. (2004). An evaluation of a “best practices” musculoskeletal injury prevention program in nursing homes. Injury Prevention, 10, 206-211.

³ Pompeii, L., Lipscomb, H., Schoenfisch, A., Dement, J. (2009). Musculoskeletal injuries resulting from patient handling tasks among hospital workers. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 52(7), 571-578.

⁴ Provincial Residential Care Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention Team. Provincial Safe Resident Handling Standards for Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention in British Columbia.

⁵  Nelson, A., Lloyd, J., Menzel, N., Gross, C. (2003). Preventing nursing back injuries: Redesigning patient handling tasks. American Association of Occupational Health Nurses Journal, 51(3), 126-134.

⁶ De Castro, A. (2004). Handle with care: The American Nurses Association’s campaign to address work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 9(3).