Evaluating the patient-handling tasks of nurses

Nurses, nurses' aides, and orderlies are among the occupational groups at highest risk for back injury. The Kaiser Permanente Northwest Region developed a Back Injury Prevention Project (BIPP) to try to reduce the back injury rate among these groups. To obtain early data on program effectiveness, we developed an instrument, the BIPP Transfer Evaluation, to evaluate patient-handling tasks. Use of the BIPP Transfer Evaluation during the BIPP pilot study revealed a 19% +/- 5% SE (P = .0003) improvement in the quality of patient transfer in the intervention group. The BIPP Transfer Evaluation is an inexpensive way to get early, objective information about the quality of an intervention to reduce back injuries among nurses, nurses' aides, and orderlies.