Journey to Safe Patient Handling
Reduce employee injury related costs Reduce employee recordable injuries with a program baseline of 27 to a goal of 7 annually (identified as a reduction of OSHA-300 Recordable Injuries) Improve customer service and provide the highest level of clinical quality through the LIFT program.
Relevance/Significance:
Prior to this partnership, it was identified that the facility was losing approximately $440K annually due to light duty restrictions related to patient mobility related injuries. The facility was incurring over 20-plus employee injuries related to patient handling per year.
Strategy and Implementation:
In August of 2013, in support of a safe patient handling and mobility initiative LIFT (Living Injury Free Together), the facility and a partner managed a complete reboot and re-launch of safe patient handling and mobility through the use of positioning and lift equipment.
Educate and provide training for 67 Transfer Coaches/Super users.
Educate and provide training for over 1000 clinical staff members
Continued education with enforcement of policy and staff accountability for non-use.
Continued monthly visits in the partnership for troubleshooting and quality control.
Evaluation:
Partnership with employee health to track, record, and discipline employee injuries related to mobility. All injuries to date have been employees choosing to not use LIFT devices
Education of over 1000 associates
Reduction from 20+ injuries in 2013, to 4 patient related injuries in 2014 and 1 recordable patient related injury YTD 2015 exceeding all expectations
Cost savings $200K
Implications for Practice:
Implications include safe patient handling, staff and patient satisfication, less report of nursing injury during patient care related mobility, increased autononmy among nursing staff through use of mobility equipment.