Safe Patient Handling for Rehabilitation Professionals

Abstract

Every day, thousands of physical therapists and rehabilitation nurses are required to perform physically demanding therapeutic patient handling tasks that are stressful to the caregiver and increase his or her risk of developing work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). In rehabilitation, patient handling tasks might be classified as"traditional" or "therapeutic."Traditional tasks have a practical goal, such as transferring a patient from bed to a wheelchair, and therapeutic tasks have more targeted goals such as facilitating patient function and independence. Therapeutic patient handling tasks present a greater risk for caregivers to sustain work-related MSDs than typical patient handling tasks do because caregivers are exposed to high mechanical loads on the spinal tissues for longer amounts of time. The Veterans Health Administration, Association of Rehabilitation Nurses, and the American Physical Therapy Association endorse the use of modern patient handling technology as part of a comprehensive safe patient handling program for providing therapy in rehabilitation settings. Information about patient handling technology that is effective in reducing the risk of work-related MSDs from performing therapeutic patient handling and movement tasks is also presented and discussed in this article.

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders among physical therapists: A comprehensive narrative review

“…Rehabilitation centers appear to be the most dangerous work setting with the highest prevalence of work-related LBP due to a stressful and physically demanding work environment [8, 17,24]. Waters and Rockefeller [39] have differentiated between patient handling tasks classified as "traditional" and those classified as "therapeutic" in a rehabilitation setting. Therapeutic tasks are designed to improve a patient's physical function and independence, whereas traditional tasks are designed to only offer a patient the needed help.…”

Assessing the Risk of Manual Handling of Patients and Its Relationship with the Prevalence of Musculoskeletal Disorders Among Nursing Staff: Performance Evaluation of the MAPO and PTAI Methods

“…Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) affect a significant proportion of the workforce and represent one of the main causes of work-related injuries among healthcare workers (1,2). Nursing, which comprises the most populous health care-related occupational group, has attracted more research attention concerning such disorders compared with other types of occupations relating to health care (3,4).…”

Deliberately Light Interpersonal Touch as an Aid to Balance Control in Neurologic Conditions

“…The main characteristic of manual support is partial transfer of the patients' body weight onto the HCP thereby increasing the risk of work-related musculoskeletal injury. Waters and Rockefeller (2010) consider therapeutic manual patient handling tasks as especially risky due to the longer durations of supporting a patient's weight. Aside from a few exceptions, recommending manual support provided at the waist and upper trunk of a patient (ACC, 2003;Potter & Perry, 2005), many rehabilitation guidelines on stroke and Parkinson's disease do not give specific advice on manual handling (AGS, 2001;Keus et al, 2004;McInnes, Gibbons, & Chandler-Oatts, 2005;NICE, 2013;NSF, 2010;SIGN, 2010) but recommend that HCPs undertake some training in physical handling techniques (NSF, 2005).…”