Prevalence of Safe Patient Handling Practice in U.S. Acute Care Hospitals

Abstract

Healthcare workers are among the occupations with the highest rates of musculoskeletal injuries and these injuries are predominantly caused by manual patient handling. Epidemiological and biomechanical studies have shown that mechanical lift equipment is effective in reducing the risk of musculoskeletal injury when mobilizing patients. Accordingly, professional organizations such as the American Nurses Association, and legislation in 11 U.S. states have recommended the use of lift equipment in healthcare facilities. However, anecdotal reports describe a slow adoption of lift use, and there is little data available to healthcare facilities for benchmarking or to policymakers for legislation. Only a few studies have investigated the prevalence of lift use with voluntary surveys of nurses. The current study leveraged the 2018 International Pressure Ulcer Prevalence™ (IPUP) survey to estimate lift use on 40,856 patients in 642 U.S. acute care hospitals. A logistic regression was used to analyze patient and facility attributes associated with lift use. Only 3.7% of all patients and 11.1% of patients with restricted mobility had been mobilized with lift equipment at any point during their care. Patients in states with SPHM legislation were 60% more likely to have a lift used during their care than patients in other states. These findings have important implications for worker safety programs, patient safety initiatives, and legislative policy.