Healthcare workers' fight to lift safely: A review and analysis of state safe patient handling laws

Healthcare workers (HCWs), one of the largest and fastest growing sectors of the economy, experience the highest number and one of the highest rates of musclulosketetal disorders (MSDs) of any industry sector. The leading MSDs experienced by HCWs are neck, back and shoulder injuries caused almost exclusively due to the manual lifting, transferring and repositioning of their patients and residents. Manual handling of patients and residents has also been shown to lead to a greater number of patient/resident skin tears that can lead to serious infections and of patients/residents being dropped. However, nearly all of these MSDs to HCWs and harm to patients/residents are preventable. With the implementation of comprehensive Safe Patient Handling (SPH) programs, manual patient/resident lifting, transferring and repositioning is replaced with appropriate state of the art mechanical lifting and transfer devices coupled with comprehensive HCW training on proper equipment use. To spur the more timely adoption of these preventative SPH programs, unions representing healthcare workers have successfully worked over the past decade with state legislators to enact more than a half dozen SPH laws thus far. This session will review the legislative dynamics necessary to achieve passage of SPH laws, will review the states that have passed such laws, will review the different elements of the SPH laws in the various states, and will review the impact of these SPH laws in demonstrating significant reductions in HCW neck, back and shoulder injuries.