Overview

How many times do you transfer or assist a patient, who has limited mobility, from their bed to their wheelchair, or from a wheelchair to a commode, etc, in an average 12-hour shift? Did you know that health care is considered the most dangerous industry, according to a report from OSHA? More Workers Comp Claims are filed by the health care industry than any other industry in the U.S, and many of those claims are directly related to injuries received while transferring patients.

Problem

As a result of these claims, OSHA recommends never lifting more than 35 lbs, in order to protect yourself, and your patient, from serious injuries and many facilities are adopting a Zero Lift policy; but in the reality of daily caring for your patients is that possible?

Imagine for a moment that you have an important home repair project that you’ve been dreading to do because in the past, doing this activity has made your neck, shoulders and back hurt. Once you even wrenched your knee. You put off doing this project to avoid the pain. One day a neighbor drops by and notices the project is still undone so you explain to him why you’ve been avoiding it and he tells you that he knows a different way of doing the same project that will get the project done perfectly and save you any pain.

Would you ask him to share this knowledge with you, or would you insist on doing it the way you’ve always done?

Manual transfers are like the story above—people have done them the same way for so long and often don’t realize that there are wonderful new developments in techniques and tools that can get the job done much more safely, easily, and quickly; but to benefit from these new innovations, you have to learn them and put them into practice.

If you would like to know more about the latest techniques and transfer tools that are leading the industry, please click below.