Policy Surveillance of Safe Patient Handling and Mobility Laws to Reduce Injury among Healthcare Workers

Abstract

Safe Patient Handling and Mobility (SPHM) programs address the tasks associated with lifting, moving, transferring, and/or assisting patients in healthcare-related settings. Manual patient handling tasks are a major source of occupational injury among healthcare workers, often resulting in harm to the back and musculoskeletal system. We systematically used legal epidemiology policy surveillance methods to capture and evaluate all state-level SPHM policies for US healthcare settings, recording their scope of coverage and enforceable elements. Since 2006, eleven states have enacted SPHM policies to reduce healthcare worker injuries. Two states repealed them later. These policies tended to target higher acuity settings rather than lower acuity or long-term residential settings and favor administrative controls over engineering controls. Specifically, the most common policy interventions included mandatory training and SPHM committees, while interventions targeting SPHM equipment availability or use were less common. Researchers, labor unions, and policymakers should prioritize engineering controls that impact physical workplace safety when crafting SPHM policy interventions.