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Sunday, May 13, 2018

Reducing Occupational Hazards of a Nurse


When I first read of nurses suffering from back injuries, it was quite a shock that a hospital could have occupational hazards. NPR’s Injured Nurses [1] made me aware of this issue that what is a treatment haven for suffering patients is dangerous for the nurses who serve there.
“There’s no safe way to do it with body mechanics”. McKinney stressed that the safest way to move patients is to use equipment, such as motorized lifts that hang from the ceilings [2]. 

On Jan. 1, 2012, the state of California put into effect the Hospital Patient and Health Care Worker Injury Protection Act. The bill requires the replacement of manual lifting and transfer of patients with the appropriate use of powered lift and transfer devices.
According to Handbook of Modern Hospital Safety by William Charney, safety committees and employee training can be effective in prevent hazardous exposures and reducing the incidences of occupational injuries, disabilities and diseases associated with employment in health care.

According to The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade website, it is a public service provided by The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization committed to driving quality, safety, and transparency in the U.S. health system. Leapfrog should also rate a hospital according to the workplace safety too. Workplace safety incidents are required to be well recorded. This information should be easy to track. National Health Care Ratings Summit is a good way to make the public aware of their role in engaging with the ratings and weeding out hospitals that do not make hospital safety a priority.
The hospital upper management too should track the reduction of workplace injuries as a KPI (Key Process Indicator). With this message, there will be a buy-in from everyone to make safety at work, a priority. VA hospitals have reduced workplace injuries by 40% using technology [3]
Patient- centered design principles like  UT Southwestern's Clements University Hospital in Dallas with double-paned glass in lieu of curtains to reduce infection risk [4]. Anti-Microbial screens too can reduce the risk of infections.
Manufacturing and Construction industry can be looked at to see how they reduced the workplace injuries.
Facts About Hospital Worker Safety [5] shows why it matters to create a culture of safety. There is a detailed analysis of the hidden costs of health worker injuries. ‘good catch’ is a nice incentive to foster safety culture.
OSHA has launched a program to protect nursing employees [6]. With a detailed look in the hospital surrounding and information gathered through the health worker interviews, OSHA should be able to come up with recommendations to reduce workplace injuries. If OSHA succeeds in getting the workplace injuries online, crowdsourcing can be used for data analysis to come up with insights that can be used to solve the problem. For example, Notevault’s Crowdsource Safety is an effective tool in assuring safety compliance in the construction industry [7].
Just like Patient Safety Managers, there should be dedicated Health Worker safety managers.
With automation as much as possible, workplace safety awareness, healthcare worker injury protection laws and hospital management support, it should be possible to create a safer environment for employees and patients.


4.     https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/healthcare/aging-growing-population-spurs-hospital-redesigns
7.     http://www.notevault.com/safety

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