HOSPITAL WARD PATIENT-LIFTING TASKS

From a questionnaire survey of the nursing staff in charge of 362 wards in Scotland and 363 wards in England, covering every major medical speciality, information was collected on five major tasks which involve lifting patients. The reliability of six parameters, namely, the method used for lifting patients, the number of patients requiring lifting, the number of staff required per patient per lift, the importance of the task, the frequency and the physical effort involved, was measured for each task and found to be acceptable. These parameters were then used to rank the five tasks within and between wards. It is concluded that current manual lifting methods are unsatisfactory and that priority should be given to detailed investigations of the problems of lifting patients in and out of chairs, repositioning patients within chairs and beds, lifting patients on and off toilets, lifting patients in and out of beds and lifting patients in and out of baths, in that order. © 1979 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.