Safe Patient Handling Musculoskeletal Injury-Prevention Smartphone App for Community Health Care Workers: Mixed...

Area of Science:

• Healthcare technology
• Occupational health
• Digital health interventions

Background:

• Safe patient handling is crucial for preventing healthcare worker injuries.
• Community health care workers face barriers to safe patient handling, including limited training and resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify unmet safe patient handling needs of community health care workers.
• To develop a user-centered smartphone app (SPH MSIP) through co-design.
• To evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of the SPH MSIP app.

Main Methods:

• A 3-phase participatory study involving community health care workers.
• Co-design process for developing the SPH MSIP app based on user feedback.
• Mixed methods evaluation including recruitment, retention, satisfaction, and qualitative interviews.

Main Results:

• Identified needs for improved safe patient handling training and real-time support.
• Developed the SPH MSIP app with features for high-risk tasks and intuitive guidance.
• App exceeded recruitment, retention, and satisfaction targets; users found it useful and usable.

Conclusions:

• The SPH MSIP app shows potential to meet community health care workers' needs for safe patient handling support.
• The app is feasible and acceptable for improving real-time patient handling practices.
• Further large-scale trials are recommended to assess the app's impact on injury reduction and patient outcomes.