The Dutch Approach to Patient Handling
Hannike JJ Knibbe, LOCOmotion Research in Health Care
1. Guidelines
The starting point of the Dutch patient handling approach is one page with pratical guidelines based on five A-E mobility levels developed by LOCOmotion (MK5). Social partners and the Dutch Labor Inspectorate enforce these guidelines. For example: a patient with mobility level C must be transferred with an active lifter. And: a seated patient must be showered on a high low shower chair.
2. Assessment tools
In The Netherlands three assessment tools are used:
1) TilThermometer assesses on a unit level whether or not staff is working according to the guidelines. TilThermometer is popular, easy to use, gives relevant monitoring data, can also be used for monitoring patient handling at regional or national level and is available online at www.tilthermometer.com
2) The RiskRadar is the equivalent of TilThermometer but meant for non-nursing tasks. It measures exposure to physical overload for porters, cleaners, computer workers, etc. We are currently working on a online version.
3) BeleidsSpiegel: a checklist, freely available at www.beleidsspiegel.nl to check whether or not the health care organization has the correct policies in place for an effective ergonomic program.
3. Implementation tools
– www.goedgebruik.nl : website with > 250 instructional patient handling video’s. GoedGebruik has about 13,500 YouTube followers and more 11 million YouTube views.
– www.zelfredzaamheidsradar.nl : assessment tool based on the Care Dependency Scale for assessing the level of self-care of individual patients on 15 topics. The ZelfredzaamheidsRadar currently has more than 60.000 users.
– www.leerstand.nl : an online tool for health care workers to assess their own patients handling knowledge and skills by answering 14 questions. After the questions are completed LeerStand gives tailored learning advice (read this article, watch this video, do this e-learning module, ask your physio, etc.). No recent analytics data available.
– www.ergofilm.nl : website with more than 80 ‘ergo-selfie-films’: video’s made by nurses who want to share how they solved an ergonomic issue in their own nursing practice. In total these ergo-selfie-films now have more than 60.000 YouTube views.
– www.freelearning.nl website with > 60 e-learning modules. About 20 modules purely focus on patient handling and ergonomics. Every month about 35.000 courses are done at Free Learning. A growing number of Free Learning modules are available in English.
4. Additionally
The Dutch approach combines online and offline implementation of safe patient handling in a multi-media mix. So we also have books (ErgoCoach pocket, GoedGebruik book), newsletters, webinars, social media, etc.
And before COVID, every year the national ErgoCoach day was organized, bringing together about 1000 ErgoCoaches for training, inspiring, discussions and new topics.
