CategoriesPatient Handling

Solving Lateral Transfers and Positioning Risk in Hospitals

What Puts The Nursing Staff At Risk?

While you may think of hospitals as one of the safest places to work, they’re actually one of the most dangerous workplaces for staff members. In fact, an OSHA study revealed that 7 workers for every 100 full-time employees at hospitals were injured on the job. Compare that rate to other private industries, and you’ll discover that hospitals are almost twice as dangerous. The nursing staff of a hospital undergoes a lot of physical exertion throughout the day. From ICUs to ORs, the nursing staff is responsible for lateral transfers of total care patients. It’s not anything out of the ordinary for a nurse to move a patient from a bed to a gurney, to a CT table, to an OR table, and back to a bed.

Most nurses perform this task dozens of times each shift. Throw in the constant need for patient repositioning, boosting, and turning and it becomes very clear why nurses are highly susceptible to repositioning injury and strains. These injuries are referred to as musculoskeletal disorders or MSD’s. These predictable, high frequency tasks are further complicated by heavier patients.

 

The Call For A Better Solution

There has been continued concern about the health of nursing staff around the country as OSHA and the Bureau Of Labor Statistics are notating negative health trends in healthcare workers. In fact, the Association of OR Nurses (AORN) has recently published a set of recommended safety guidelines and a tool kit that includes the use of air powered lateral transfer systems for each surgery patient.  See the slides below from the AORN Toolkit. While the laws may not have caught up to the ongoing injury increases, the healthcare manufacturers have. They’ve developed air powered systems that are fast, comfortable, easy to use, and highly efficient for both caregivers and patients alike.

What Are Air Powered Systems?

Air powered systems are comprised of an inflatable pad, easy-to-use air supply,

power cord, and a hose. The patient is placed on the air powered lateral transfer system. The pump is inserted into the pad. As the pump quickly runs to fill up the pad, it sounds similar to a vacuum cleaner. Once the mattress is pumped up, it’s time to move the patient.

These air powered systems come with straps to hold the patient safely in place during the lateral transfers process. They also come with convenient handles for the caregivers to use when sliding that patient from one surface to another. In most cases, the lifting or pulling weight is reduced to almost 10 percent of the patient’s weight.

With virtually no friction beneath the pad when transferring from surface to surface, moving patients can be done with minimal caregiver exertion.  Reducing exertion reduces risk of injury to nursing staff.   There are a few different brands that offer this system, including SPH Medical, and Hovermatt. Air powered transfer systems can also be easily used for patient repositioning.

The Immediate Benefit Of Air Powered Transfer Systems

Air powered lateral transfer systems provide many notable benefits for both the healthcare worker and the patient. These systems provide a less strenuous way for healthcare workers to transfer patients from one surface to another. This reduces the occurrence of a nursing injury, including a repositioning injury or a chronic low back injury.

With the recent COVID-19 pandemic concerns, more and more healthcare facilities are investing in disposable pads for air powered systems. These pads can be easily thrown out after each use, or reprocessed, reducing risk of cross contamination in between patients and reducing risk of infections hospital wide.

Improve Patient Satisfaction

For patients, these air powered transfer systems provide a more comfortable and safe transfer process. Since the patient is being supported by the inflatable pad instead of a draw sheet, the transfer process feels more supportive and comfortable.  The uncomfortable and typically manual process of being transferred is replaced with a frictionless float to the target surface.  In addition, the safety straps give the patient a feeling of security during the transfer.  Overall patients are happier and staff are safer.  This is a win win for everyone including the hospital.

 

 

SPH Medical EPD 4
CategoriesInfection Prevention,  Patient Handling

The EPD and Air Transfer System Improve Patient and Staff Safety

SPH Medical is Improving Safety for Hospital Staff and Patients

SPH Medical is here to improve patient staff safety in labor and delivery and surgical units with the Epidural Positioning Device and the air transfer system.

COVID-19 is putting our healthcare workers at risk. Manually handling patients under normal conditions is known to put our nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers at risk. Now more than ever hospital staff need to have the right tools to help move, support, lift and transfer patients. The EPD and air powered lateral transfer system improve patient and staff safety especially during this time of heightened concern about infection prevention.

SPH Medical Provides Safe Patient Handling Solutions to Healthcare Facilities

SPH Medical provides Safe Patient Handling solutions to healthcare facilities which means that we protect our frontline caregivers by preventing infection and injuries.

Within Hospitals nurses are being asked to care for patients infected with Cov-Sars2 and other deadly viral and bacterial infections. In order to deal with these deadly infections the Infection Control Nurse within the hospital mandates that single patient use devices are used where possible to lift move and transfer patients. Single patient use items are essentially disposable items that are patient specific, which means that they don’t get used with other patients. The outside laundry system generally isn’t trusted with returning specialized items or hospital owned items back to the hospital so then hospital is forced to use “disposable” items where possible to minimize the risk of infection to other patients. At times this can seem costly, but the risk and cost of hospital acquired infections and and nursing injuries is well with the investment.

How Does this Relate to One of the Most Important Departments in the Hospital?

The Labor and Delivery department is where new mothers give birth to their children in what should be safe and infection free environment.

A large percentage of mothers are continuing to get cesarean section procedures (cite sources and %) even in today’s COVID-19 environment.

With the c-section procedure comes several high-frequency patient handling tasks that Put our nurses and doctors at risk every day, lateral transfers to the OB OR table and patient positioning during the epidural injection procedure.

First the Epidural. Positioning the patient in the proper position for the injection puts our nurses at risk of injury. (See other blog posts we’ve written). We solve this my by making the patient comfortable and eliminating the static holding by the nurse with the Epidural Positioning Device.

Once the patient has received the epidural successfully and the are ready to be moved to the OB OR for the C-section procedure that staff have to plan how to move the patient on and off the table safely. Keep in mind the patient can’t scoot across to the table. They can’t feel their lower half! The staff need to use a assistive tool to transfer the patient safely on and off the OR table. What solutions are available to accomplish this?

Lateral Transfer Devices Available on the Market

There are a variety of lateral transfer devices available on the market to help transfer patients safely to and from beds, gurneys, OR tables, and Imaging Tables.

There are simple Friction Reducing Devices such as slide sheets (“easy slide disposable“ from SPH Medical) Available in many styles: flat sheets with handles, tube style sheets, there are lateral transfer boards made out of plastic also called slider boards – these are not ideal as they don’t significantly reduce friction to safe levels, there are roller boards like the Rollerslide by SPH Medical which act like a conveyer belt moving with the patient. Finally the gold standard of lateral transfer solutions is the air powered lateral transfer system which floats the patient on a comfortable layer of air between the two surfaces. This   makes the transfer process not only more comfortable for the patient but also eliminates risk of injury to the nursing and hospital staff performing the transfer. You can find a well documented clinical evaluation on Friction Reducing Devices here by Andrea Baptiste, MA, CIE, Sruthi V. Boda, MS, Audrey L. Nelson, PhD, RN, FAAN, John D. Lloyd, PhD, MErgS, CPE, and William E. Lee, III, PhD.

All Employees Should be Wearing the Appropriate Fluid Rated N95 Respirators

All employees should be wearing the appropriate fluid rated N95 respirators like the Makrite 9500-N95 which is FDA 510K approved for use as a surgical mask.

Summary

The EPD and air powered transfer system improve patient and staff safety. SPH Medical provides a total solution to reduce risks of infection and injury to our frontline caregivers in Labor and Delivery and throughout the hospital. This is not limited to Labor and Delivery departments. We are addressing similar risks throughout the entire hospital and continuum of care helping to create new standards for safety and protection of our healthcare workers. This is not about obesity and COVID. This is about caring for every patient and every nurse to improve patient outcomes and reduce risks of Infection and injury related to MSD’s and high-risk, high-frequency patient care tasks.

Please contact SPH Medical to learn more about improving safety in Labor and Delivery with air transfer systems and the EPD. To learn more about the Makrite N95 Mask options including the 9500-N95 and the SEKURA-N95.

CategoriesPatient Handling

CDC and NiOSH – Safe Patient Handling is a priority

Nurses continue to be injured at an alarming rate compared to other professions. With an increasing retirement population of baby boomers and now skilled nurses leaving the workforce for retirement our hospitals are facing a knowledge and skill gap that is difficult to replace. Safe Patient Handling efforts by many hospitals have allowed Nurses to work safely, longer.

The CDC and NiOSH have developed a web page that provides a wide variety of links and resources related to Safe Patient Handling and injury prevention.

Here is an excerpt from the CDC’s website:

Patient Handling Hazards

Rates of musculoskeletal injuries from overexertion in healthcare occupations are among the highest of all U.S. industries. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that in 2014, the rate of overexertion injuries averaged across all industries was 33 per 10,000 full time workers. By comparison, the overexertion injury rate for hospital workers was twice the average (68 per 10,000), the rate for nursing home workers was over three times the average (107 per 10,000), and the rate for ambulance workers was over five times the average (174 per 10,000).1 The single greatest risk factor for overexertion injuries in healthcare workers is the manual lifting, moving and repositioning of patients, residents or clients, i.e., manual patient handling.

The CDC resource page can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/safepatient/

About SPH Medical, Inc

SPH Medical is a leading provider of clinical education and solutions to help hospitals reduce the risk of staff and patient injuries and their associated costs. SPH Medical focuses on three key areas; education, safe patient handling, and infection prevention.

ICU Patients benefit from Early Patient Mobility

Contact SPH Medial today to help mobilize patient safely, implement early patient mobility programs, improve outcomes and reduce the risk of injury to both patients and staff.

www.sphmedical.com
info@sphmedical.com
Tel: 1-844-3-SPHMED

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