"We've found that if nurses don't feel safe in the workplace, it does make a difference whether they stay in nursing profession, and also what type of nursing they do," says Nancy Hughes, the director of American Nurses Association's center of environmental and occupational health. She also oversees the group's program for safe patient handling.

Lifts - a helping hand
But there's a solution, nurses say. Over the last decade or two, a number of studies have been done on automated patient lifts, machines which do most of the heavy lifting for health care workers, to safely transport patients from, for instance, bed to bed or bed to bathroom.
Originally developed in the 1950s, these lifts use slings and hydraulics to hoist up patients. Ceiling-mounted lifts are attached to rails on the ceiling, while floor-based ones can be carted from room to room.

One study conducted at a 60-bed long-term care facility run by the Veteran's Affairs agency found installing ceiling-mounted patient lifts reduced lost workday rates from 312 hours per 100,000 worked hours before the installation to zero after the installation. Other hospitals and nursing homes have had similar experiences. For instance, a few years ago Beth Israel Deaconness Hospital in Massachusetts installed a mix of ceiling and portable no-lift equipment (made by industry leader Liko, a Swedish company now owned by HillRom) for eight patient desks on the general medical floor, where there was a significant geriatric population.

"We found that injury to staff went to zero," says Christine Kristeller, a geriatric clinical nurse specialist with Beth Israel, who leads her hospital's safe patient handling initiative. "Comparing pre-installation to post-installation over the course of a year, they had zero staff injuries. This was a very impressive piece of information."

And fewer injuries, in the long run, could save hospitals money.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates installing a mix of floor and ceiling lifts generally costs $50,000 to $60,000 for a 100-bed nursing home. (They recommend about one full-body lift for every eight to 10 patients who can't bear weight and one stand-up lift for every eight to 10 partial weight-bearing patients.) The government group says the initial investment in equipment and training is recuperated in two to three years through reductions in workers' compensation expenses. The Veterans Affairs study mentioned earlier found the yearly cost of injuries declined from $32,266 to $10,187, meaning the equipment paid for itself within five years.

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