Patient Safety
Patients handling and lifting is a hazardous task for nurses and caregivers in health centers. Most nurses believe that safe patient handling equipment is time-consuming as well as require skill to operate (Bright et al., 2019). The machine is not also readily available. In their opinion, manual lifting is the best as it consumes less time. It, however, does not guarantee the patient’s safety as the patients might get injured during the manual transfer. To minimize this problem, the health centers should ensure that there is enough safety patient handling equipment to provide all the patients are taken care of and reduce the injury rates. The increment in the number of skilled nurses who can operate the SPH is very necessary to minimize the time taken to transfer patients mechanically. The age of the nurses who are in the hospitals is also alarming as the average age is forty-seven; according to research, one’s productivity starts to decline at forty years.
Comparing the two scenarios of manual lifting of patients and using the safety handling equipment, there are a reduced number of injuries in the patients while using the machine. While using the equipment, the injuries recorded are less than ten as compared to the manual lifting by nurses who may record up to a hundred cases within the same time (Lee et al., 2017). The time consumed while using the machines under-skilled labour is less and effective time utilization as compared to the standard approach. In the manual method, the number of nurses required for the lifting is higher as compared to the only one operator for the machine. In using the machine, there are fewer injuries as well as less misuse of resources. The time taken to accomplish the above results is only three months.
References
Bright, K., Callahan, L., & Saunders, S. (2019). Evaluation of Safety Related to Current Patient Mobility Practices.
Lee, S. J., & Lee, J. H. (2017). Safe patient handling behaviours and lift use among hospital nurses: A cross-sectional study. International journal of nursing studies, 74, 53-60.