Patient handling in India-Evidence from a pilot study

Manual handling forms an important part of a health care worker's daily routine. Faulty techniques may result in musculoskeletal injuries in health workers and further injury to patients.

In our study, we assessed the techniques of patient moving and handling by health care workers in our hospital. Our aim was to educate them on standard moving and handling techniques and assess the impact of the same.

We carried out a time-bound prospective clinical audit wherein we observed workers in the emergency department for a period of 2 weeks to evaluate their moving and handling techniques. This was followed by a training session where the workers were trained in "best-practices," and a 2-week period of reevaluation to assess compliance with standard practices.

During bed-to-bed transfers, we found improvements in the following seven parameters after the training session: (a) the use of good posture, (b) the use of wheel stoppers, (c) adjustment of bed height, (d) positioning the receiving bed parallel to patient's bed, (e) general risk assessment before transferring a patient, (f) involvement of at least three carers, and (g) the use of a standard command like "GO" before the transfer.

Apart from serving the purpose of an audit, our study has revealed that the training of health care providers in safe moving and handling of patients is a neglected subject in India.