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In response to the significant number and severity of work-related back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders among nurses, the American Nurses Association (ANA) has launched the Handle With Care® campaign.* The campaign seeks to build a health care industry-wide effort to prevent back and other musculoskeletal injuries. This is being done through developing partnerships and coalitions, education and training, increasing use of assistive equipment and patient-handling devices, reshaping nursing education to incorporate safe patient handling, and pursuing federal and state ergonomics policy by highlighting technology-oriented safe-patient handling benefits for patients and nurses. In the absence of ergonomics regulations at national or state levels that protect health care workers, ANA has taken on alternative approaches to encourage a movement to control ergonomic hazards in the health care workplace and prevent back injuries among the nation's nursing workforce.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is being reprinted with permission from The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, September 2004, 9(3). Available: www.nursingworld.org/ojin/topic25/tpc25_2.htm
KEY WORDS: back injury, devices, ergonomics, equipment, Handle With Care®, musculoskeletal disorders, patient care ergonomics, safe patient handling, nursing, OSHA, occupational safety, nurse safety
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are the leading occupational health problem plaguing the nursing workforce. Of primary concern are back injuries, which can be severely debilitating for nurses, though other types of musculoskeletal injuries can involve additional body parts such as the neck, shoulders, wrists, and knees. Compared to other occupations, nursing personnel are among the highest at risk for musculoskeletal disorders. Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants ranked second and registered nurses sixth in a list of at-risk occupations for strains and sprains that included truck drivers (first), laborers (third), and construction workers (seventh) (United States Department of Labor [U.S. DOL], 2002) (see Table 1). Additional estimates for the year 2000 show that the incidence rate for back injuries involving lost work days was 181.6 per 10,000 full-time workers in nursing homes and 90.1 per 10,000 full-time workers in hospitals, whereas comparative incidence rates per 10,000 full-time workers were 98.4 for truck drivers, 70.0 for construction workers, 56.3 for miners, and 47.1 for agriculture workers (U.S. DOL, 2000). In 2001, for cases involving days away from work among registered nurses (total of 24,719), 4,547 were categorized as overexertion in lifting and 14,832 were listed...