Moving and Handling
UK taxpayers are footing a £400 million annual bill for NHS staff that have injured their backs at work.
Each year, over 80,000 nurses injure their backs at work and 3,600 healthcare workers are forced to retire early. Across the care sector manual handling injuries account for over a quarter of all reported injuries to employees, this amounts to 20,000 potentially preventable injuries a year.
The centre of disease and prevention published annual costs of nursing back injury to be $20bn, in the US, and similar issues are prevalent across the globe.
Our mission is to continue to work closely with clinical staff to allow us to continue to understand the ever increasing challenges at ward level, and deliver solutions that will minimise risk in every segment of the clinical arena.
One increasing challenge that is creating pressure both globally and in the UK is the need to care for the obese or bariatric patient. These patients have many clinical challenges to face but once they present in hospitals or community settings, it is often a nursing nightmare, with inappropriate equipment available, which poses risks to all involved.
There is UK government legislation regarding the use of equipment – PUWER which is the 'Provision and use of Work Equipment Regulations'.
In general terms the regulation requires that the equipment for use at work is:
- Suitable for its intended use. – (ie weight capacity and width).
- Is safe and maintained and kept in a safe condition for its next use.
- Used only by people who have received information and or training.
- Accompanied by suitable safety measures, protective devices, markings and warnings.
But quite often the equipment is not suitable; it does not have the capability to support heavy patients, and more often than not does not allow the width for patient comfort, movement and appropriate patient handling.
This scenario creates risk, typically these patients are difficult to move at best. It can take 5 or more nursing staff to reposition a large patient just to carry out simple activities of daily living - as well as simple repositioning activities to relieve pressure on the patients skin.
In the NHS today, nursing shortages, an ageing nursing population and other clinical challenges often prevent or make these types of movement almost impossible, thus increasing the risks to the patient and care staff.
When these nursing procedures are carried out, space in the bed platform is a must to ensure safety of care staff and to reduce the risk of back or shoulder injury.
Additionally there is the almost impossible task when the patient and bed, often a combined weight of up to 600 Kgs, has to be moved to X-Ray. This is a real challenge that will continue to put clinical and portering staff at risk as it is published that by 2030 there will be 30 million people classed as obese, putting more and more pressure and risk into the clinical environment.
Medstroms clinical team are focused to carefully select medical products that will minimise or prevent risk to the user when moving the patient or the product around the hospital.