Promoting Safety For Healthcare Workers

The Occupational Safety and Health Act purpose is to assure that individuals are working in safe environments. OSHA has been around for over 40 years and has come with many advantages as well as disadvantages. According to OSHA, “nursing homes and personal care facilities has had one the highest injury and illness rates, workers have faced numerous amounts of health hazards, and disorders compared to other work places”. These obstacles occurring in the health care work force has lead to the NYS Safe Patient Handling Act. This act consists of programs ensuring workers are better educated on how to prevent injuries, reduce disorders and improve quality of care towards patients.

Aides spend many hours standing and walking, and often face heavy workloads. Because they may have to move patients in and out of bed or help them stand or walk, they must guard against back injury. Aides may also face hazards from minor infections and major diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis, but can avoid infections by following proper procedures. Most L.P.N.’s work a 40-hour week, but because patients need around-the-clock care, some work nights, weekends, and holidays. They often stand for long periods and help patients move in bed, stand, or walk. They also face hazards from caustic chemicals, radiation, and infectious diseases and also are subject to back injuries when moving patients. In addition, the patients they care for may be confused, irrational, agitated or uncooperative.

Los Angeles, Doctor and founder John McLaughlin, came up with the idea to reduce health care costs and improve patient safety

In this task I will be describing how health and safety legislation, policies and procedures promotes the safety of individuals in a Hospital. Quality care is an important issue for both health care workers and their partners. Government continue to work on implementing staffing law that will upgrade the medical systems. Hospitals are required to provide security for patients and staff. Mechanical equipment, housekeeping, administrative and food staff play important roles in preventing all environmental hazards. Safety concerns surrounding these hazards include injury, illness, disease exposure, disaster

Workplace safety is a major issue faced by nurses in healthcare settings. It is said that, hospitals are hazardous workplaces; unsafe workplaces are dangerous for the patients too. Today, many nurses are suffering hospital violence, heavy workloads causing serious injuries, contracting diseases caused by exposures to certain diseases, antineoplastics, and certain health care toxins, that workers bring home to their families. This in turn leads to acute staff shortages. Ample supply of nurses is very important in providing safe and timely care to the patient population. Maintaining a healthy workplace will enable the healthcare systems to control costs associated with healthcare management as well as enhancing the productivity of nurses in health care. It is estimated that creating a healthy environment in the workplace not only benefit nurses, but also benefits patients and other members of the health care team. This report explains some of the safety issues existing in health care, which directly or indirectly affects nurses as well as the health of the Canadian population.

Employers must ensure the health and safety of employees at work and other people on the premises.

The American Nurses Association (ANA) is supporting efforts to reduce or eliminate musculoskeletal injuries associated with lifting, repositioning, and transferring patients. According to the American Nurses Association (2016), the average nurse will lift 1.8 tons per shift and over 38% of nurses will experience a back injury during his or her career. The ANA endorses legislation that requires healthcare facilities to implement the use of patient handling assistive equipment. Through this initiative, the ANA hopes to ease some of the nursing shortage issues that are compounded by work-related injuries.

Staff injuries that include lower back discomfort and MSD’s are considered of the most common amongst healthcare professionals (Liebert, 2007). Recent articles reflect that a staggering seventy percent of staff injuries are related to direct manual patient handling and transfers (Liebert, 2007). Staff injuries negatively affect productivity levels secondary to lost time (Liebert, 2007). This often creates a viscous cycle leaving less staff to care for more patients. This in turn increases the risks for experiencing an injury onto the overburdened and overwhelmed staff. The use of the Procedural Stretcher with

Maintaining a secure surrounding is a reflection of the organizational culture and an indicator of the level of compassion and vigilance that the organization has for the workers and the welfare of the patients. The management needs to improve safety and assess the causes of error during the handling of patients. As a matter of fact, the stakeholders and the policymakers need to intense their efforts to establish and structure conditions and process that will promote healthy working conditions and improve the patient safety. Health care staff need to be trained in the proper skills of handling patients with terminal and highly infectious diseases. The workers and the management should ensure that the workers are provided with the relevant protective gears while handling a patient. The cases of nonlethal activity injuries are the main reasons for sickness among the staff. Purchase and use of patient transfer and lifting facilities are the key elements of an efficient program to manage the danger of injury to patients and employees related to lifting, moving, locating or movement of patients. It will also show the level of management commitment to implement a secure patient handling program and to supply the health workers with applicable measures to avoid manual handling. The education and coaching of aid staff ought to be in gear towards assessment of hazards within the assistance work setting, choice and use of the acceptable patient lifting instrumentation and devices, and review of research-based practices of safe patient

Organizations have the responsibility to provide a safe work environment for their employees. Lift equipment is expensive; however the return on investment is profound (ANA, 2013). In my previous organization, we spent two million dollars on a SPHM program, at three years had a full return on investment, and by year seven saved six million dollars (OSHA, 2013). According to Nelson (2008), it takes less time and less wear and tear on the body to use SPHM equipment than to gather a team of people to lift a patient. Physically fit health care providers are four times more likely to be injured due to repeated requests for lift help (Nelson, 2008). Educating health care workers in ergonomics for the past twenty years

One of the practice concerns is Safe staffing level –identify that safe staffing can impact the safety and quality of patient care. Unseemly staffing level jeopardize patient health and safety causing nurse pressure , fatigue , injury and decrease ability to distribute patient safe care Nurses enveloped the largest health care workforce in most countries. Few reasons why nurses left the work force due to unsafe staffing level. Nurses felt overworked and underpaid. Sometimes they cannot take off on special or emergent situation, schedules are not fairly approved, or just simply other people need change. These are few reasons, but influential reasons, nurses are burned out and overworked. A safe staffing ratio of 1 nurse to 6-7 patients in

Safety is the most important factor for patients receiving care within healthcare organizations. Health care workers and team members most especially nurses play an important role in the protection of the patients ensuring prevention of falls and injuries that occur as a result from falls. Falls are known to be the second leading cause of death from unintentional injuries worldwide (Mitchell, 2017). Nurses have the onus to keep their patients safe from falls and associated injuries daily. Patients that have been hospitalized are at higher risk of falls. Nurses have various tasks to be done per shift and it is important to ensure time is made available to meet

The aim of this assignment is to portray knowledge and understanding of all aspects of Safety and Health while working as a nurse in a hospital environment. All employees must comply and familiarise themselves with legislation and acts. These acts include The Safety, Health and Welfare Act 2005 and The manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992. Employers must “ Ensure the safety, health and welfare at work of his or her employees, manage and conduct work activities in such a way as to ensure the safety, health and welfare at work of all employees, manage and conduct work activities in such a way as to prevent any improper conduct or behaviour likely to endanger employees, provide information, instruction, training and supervision,

The greatest risk factor for overexertion injuries in health care workers is the manual lifting, moving, and repositioning of patients (Perry, Potter, & Elkin, 2016, p. 399). According to BLS (2012), "More recent data show that within the health care industry, workers in these occupations suffered the most lost-time cases of general musculoskeletal pain and back pain (13,000)" (as cited in Perry, Potter, & Elkin, 2016, p. 400). Therefore, when turning/positioning a patient or transferring them from the bed to a chair/wheelchair, there are certain principles of body mechanics that are important to keep in mind.

This assignment will focus on one of the extremely important topics of the many hazards in the healthcare work place that may pose as a threat to my health and safety in the Care Industry.