MASSACHUSETTS NURSE NEWSLETTER :: May/June 2008

H. 2052, An Act Relating to Safe Patient Handling in Certain Health Care Facilities cleared another hurdle when the Joint Committee on Health Care Finance voted to give it a favorable report.

The bill, which was filed by Rep. Jennifer Callahan (D-Sutton) with the support of the MNA, would require hospitals and nursing homes to provide a system to assist nurses and caregivers with safe patient handling in order to avoid injury.

Skeletal injuries have costly implications for hospitals, health care providers and insurers and drives nurses away from the bedside. Patient safety is the primary concern at all facilities, and protecting nurses and other caregivers from injury is critical to safe patient care. In addition to the personal cost to the injured worker associated with patient handling injuries, the facility costs range from workers’ compensation payments to lost productivity to retention/personnel expenses.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, direct patient care RNs are injured from lifting, moving and repositioning their patients at a higher injury rate than that of laborers, movers, and truck drivers. Frequent heavy lifting and transferring of patients is causing skeletal issues that are debilitating nurses, driving them from the bedside, and exacerbating the shortage of nurses willing to work in the acute care setting. Shockingly, the cumulative weight lifted by a nurse in one typical eighthour shift is equivalent to 1.8 tons.

This issue is gaining more and more attention across the country. Nine states including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington have enacted similar legislation in the past two years.

“We applaud the committee for recognizing the need to provide better protections for nurses and other caregivers. This bill will have a lasting positive impact on the lives and careers of the state’s health care workforce,” said Beth Piknick, RN and president of the MNA, who became an advocate for safe patient handling legislation after experiencing a debilitating back injury resulting from moving patients.

H. 2052 calls for all health care facilities in the state to develop and implement a health care worker back injury prevention program to protect nurses and other caregivers, in addition to patients, from injury. The proposal would require providers to make available necessary patient handling equipment or lifting teams, as well as specialized training for health care workers on safe patient handling techniques and the use of handling equipment.