Patient Safety in Moving and Handling Activities
For many years the focus of manual handling activities in healthcare has been the well-being of the caregiver. There are a range of interventions that have been shown to reduce the risks to staff but relatively little research looking at the risks to patients. This paper reports an analysis of two datasets from the UK and USA to explore patient safety in handling activities. The first dataset looked at reports to the Health and Safety Executive (UK) from 2005-2007 for injuries relating to falls from height (n=275) and handling injuries for in-patients (n=48). The incident report free text was coded for falls, handling, lift (hoist) and supervision. Handling incidents were found to involve a fall in 50％ of reports (n=24) whereas the falls incidents involved handling activities in only 21％ (n=58) of reports. The second database (Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience; MAUDE) was searched to study patient safety events associated with moving and handling equipment from 1992-2005. A key word search (caregiver, lifter, lifting, lifting equipment, bed, bath, stretcher) produced 757 records after data cleaning. The free text data were coded for patient injuries (no injury, n=184; minor injury, n=239; serious injury, n=237; death, n=52). A taxonomy of events was created by coding the reports as lift (n=382) and sling (n=291) related events with subcodes for possible causes, e.g. lift failures, fall from sling. Sling events (although fewer in number) were significantly more likely than lift events to be involved in injuries and death outcomes. This preliminary exploration has revealed that falls are likely to be associated with 50％ of reported handling incidents. The MAUDE analysis found that patient injuries were reported for 70％ of lifts and sling events. The results suggest that further investigation is needed to explore risks associated with manual handling activities and inpatient falls.
Gina Sands Sue Hignett
Healthcare Ergonomics and Patient Safety Unit, Loughborough University, UK
国际会议
17th World Congress on Ergonomics(第十七届国际人类工效学大会)
北京
英文
1-5
2009-08-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）