Creative ways to Bring Safe Patient Handling and Mobility Awareness to Healthcare Facilities
Jasmin Waterman-Parris, MS, NPD-BC, RN
Eighteen Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty Minutes:
To put it simply, for ten years I worked as a staff nurse at the bedside. In those minutes and hours that turned into days, I helped patients navigate and get through their most difficult moments. As a nurse we assess patient’s needs, provide nursing interventions and treatments, medicate patients, and coordinate with interdisciplinary team members (nurses, doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, physical therapists, dieticians, occupational therapists, social workers, etc.). As nurses, our priority is and has always been to keep patients safe and prevent harm.
How Time is a Significant Factor in Patient Handling Injuries:
10 years is a significant amount of time to continuously expose oneself to patient handling injuries. Typically, every day involves multiple repetitive movements, lifting, pulling, turning, and transferring patients from bed to chair, chair to bed, bed to stretcher, and bed to bedside commode/shower chair. Bathing patients and giving hygiene care also involves a lot of physicality when patients are bed bound and immobile.
I have personally sustained injuries; both sprains and strains from improper body mechanics when mobilizing patients, from inaccurate assessments of patient capabilities and limitations, from not using patient handling equipment, involving too few or too many staff to mobilize patients, and turning/repositioning patients on my own. Sometimes nursing staff will go it alone and turn patients themselves when other staff may be preoccupied with nursing care. There have been other situations in which I’ve caught fallen patients who were at the time having a seizure episode. You feel relieved to prevent a fall and harm to a patient, but at the same time not realizing the injury you could be imposing on yourself with such a maneuver.
So, how can patient handling injuries affect direct care workers?
One might experience lost days of work, limited mobility, pain, costly medical expenses, inability to perform as a direct care worker and a decrease in quality of life. Nurses may begin their careers in their early 20’s. That’s a long time before retirement and one must preserve their body. The wear and tear on a nurses’ body can heavily influence the type of nursing job one wants to work in.
My involvement in Safe Patient Handling and Mobility:
For the past 7 years, I have worked in a leadership role as a nursing professional development specialist in the in-patient and ambulatory care areas. I am responsible for onboarding nursing staff, facilitating learning, assessments and evaluation of gaps in knowledge and practice, and nursing standards development. Safe patient handling and mobility (SPHM) in New York State has legislation that requires hospitals provide education on safe patient handling resources and equipment. State laws also require that safe patient handling committees involve both nursing staff and leadership. Nursing staff account for highest work-related injuries. So, it is imperative to have nurses and nurse leaders involved in safe patient handling efforts.
As a safe patient handling and mobility campus steering committee member, it is my job to share nursing insight and educate others, and to assess barriers to safe patient handling practice. Areas to question include staff knowledge of body ergonomics, SPHM contact information, patient handling equipment, location of equipment and indications in which to use it. It is imperative to reinforce to staff the importance of reporting all work related injuries as well.
As a safe patient handling and mobility committee, we have created policies and standards and developed a SPHM team for the hospital to support patient mobilization needs. The SPHM team members include a physical therapist and occupational therapist. The SPHM committee was very instrumental in operationalizing a prone team during the COVID surge.
Increasing safe patient handling and mobility awareness:
It’s important to conduct informal and formal surveys and ensure members of the safe patient handling committees include representation of all direct health care workers and management. Creating a SPHM team or department can provide staff training and real time education on patient equipment and mobility needs for moving patients. It is important to get nursing staff involved in quality improvement projects at the unit level, to share injury data with staff and leadership, and to identify trends and create solutions for safer patient handling. It is also important to have product and equipment fairs in which staff can see equipment in person, speak to company representatives and vote on machines/equipment that they like best.
In April 2021, we were creative in increasing safe patient handling and mobility awareness throughout our hospital systems. We provided information sessions in nursing practice councils and online nursing clinical update bulletins. For people who were not particularly interested in online awareness activities, I created a safe patient handling and mobility puzzle. I utilized a puzzle generator and included words related to safe patient handling.
Incorporating Games:
Understanding that we have different nursing generations, I wanted to offer a variety of safe patient handling awareness activities. Incorporation of games into SPHM awareness activities was a personal interest of mine as it enhances engagement and interaction.
We created a safe patient handling Jeopardy game, which evolved into a SPHM Kahoot game. The Kahoot game was created to be an asynchronous online competition game with a set end date. The winner received a prize. In addition, I created a virtual scavenger hunt through GooseChase. This game involved completion of tasks related to safe patient handling. Individual staff were required to submit proof through photo/video submission of equipment and staff through a series of challenges. Each task was assigned a point system. For example, a challenge may instruct staff to find a piece of equipment for patient transfer or provide the contact information for the safe patient handling department. This goal of this game was twofold; to make it interactive and fun also while reinforcing the safe patient handling resources available within hospital.
Networking:
Last year during Safe Patient Handling Awareness Month, I had the pleasure to speak with the public on the Sirius XM “Doctor Radio” show with my physical therapist colleague to discuss how the SPHM team helps support patient and staff safety. It’s important to reach out to organizations that are involved in SPHM Awareness. Meeting with company vendors at nursing conferences are great ways to try out equipment firsthand and bring information back to your organization leaders.
Self-Care:
It’s also important for nurses to practice self-care. In order to help our patients, we must help ourselves. Incorporating frequent exercise, stretching and engaging your core can perhaps minimize injuries during patient handling and mobility.
