Patient falls in healthcare settings has long been a problem that despite many attempts to solve still continues to happen all too frequently. The solution most hospitals and long term care facililities have implemented in recent years are bed and chair alarms.
This hasn’t been the week for me in terms of health. It started last weekend with a nasty sore throat and by Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I had a fever of 102. Not being accustomed to being sick, especially having a fever, I decided to go into an Urgent Care clinic. Despite having a fever, chills and body aches I was able to focus on the incorporation of ergonomics into the design and equipment of the exam room. Here are a few observations that caught my attention for meeting/fitting the needs of the patients and caregivers alike:
“It’s impossible for me to this because….”
“There’s no way I can do it that way”
“It’s difficult for me to do it that way because…”
“If I did it that way, ____ would happen”
If you’ve heard statements similar to these it’s probably because your employees have obstacles or barriers in their way of performing and doing things the way they’ve been trained or instructed. In this final blog series I’m going to discuss how to approach obstacles and barriers that get in the way of employees doing what they’ve been trained to do.
Continuing on with my blog series on the four common reasons why employees don’t do what they’ve been trained, I’m going to take a closer look at perception. The scenario I’m going to use as the basis for this is one which is occurring in many hospitals and long term care facilities around the country: caregivers not using safe patient handling (SPH) equipment to move patients. This has become a source of frustration for many SPH program leaders. As you will see, the lack of SPH equipment use could easily involve all 4 reasons but for this blog we’ll focus only on perception.
The debate on whether gait belts are safe lifting devices for caregivers to use with patients who require assistance has been going on since safe patient handling (SPH) became a focus issue for healthcare facilities and caregivers alike. Just last week MNOSHA stated that they and NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) do not consider gait belts as “lifting devices”(MNOSHA e-newsletter, Safety Lines, http://www.dli.mn.gov/OSHA/PDF/7
