Moving and Handling Patients at a Glance

Hamish MacGregor

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118853665
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Tecniche infermieristiche

Moving and Handling Patients at a Glance

The market-leading at a Glance series is popular among healthcare students and newly qualified practitioners for its concise and simple approach and excellent illustrations.

Each bite-sized chapter is covered in a double-page spread with clear, easy-to-follow diagrams, supported by succinct explanatory text. Covering a wide range of topics, books in the at a Glance series are ideal as introductory texts for teaching, learning and revision, and are useful throughout university and beyond.

Everything you need to know about Moving and Handling Patients … at a Glance!

From the publishers of the market-leading at a Glance series comes a succinct and visual guide to the topic of moving and handling. Wide-ranging yet easy to read, Moving and Handling Patients at a Glance provides an accessible introduction to the key theoretical underpinnings of moving and handling, including the legal aspects, biomechanics, risk assessment and safe principles of handling. It then explores the practical aspects of handling, supported by clear and straightforward illustrations and photographs.

• A clear, concise and comprehensive guide to moving and handling patients
• Superbly illustrated, with full colour photographs throughout
• Practice-oriented and based on the latest evidence to provide safe and effective patient care
• Available in a wide-range of digital formats — perfect for on-the-go study and revision

Moving and Handling Patients at a Glance is ideal for nursing students, health care assistants, newly qualified nurses, as well as physiotherapists and occupational therapists.

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Part 1
Theory

Chapters

1. 1 Legislation
2. 2 Legislation
3. 3 Structure and function of the spine
4. 4 Posture and back care
5. 5 Safe principles of moving and handling
6. 6 Controversial techniques
7. 7 Risk assessment: moving and handling
8. 8 Risk assessment: general
9. 9 Individual patient handling assessment

1
Legislation: I

This chapter covers three areas of legislation that relate to moving and handling. Chapter 2 will deal with four other areas. This is not a complete list but examples of the major pieces of legislation affecting moving and handling practice.

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA)

This act and its regulations impose a duty of care on every employer to ‘ensure as far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all employees’. It not only puts duties on the employer but the employees too. A résumé of the act is given in Figure 1.1

The HSWA is a broad piece of legislation and could be described as an umbrella that covers a raft of other legislation that is more specific in its nature to moving and handling. The key areas are two-fold: first, the provision of equipment and a safe system of work to accompany this; second, the provision of information, instruction, training and supervision. The key to good moving and handling practice is not only good training. This should provide the handler with the skills to handle patients safely without injuring the patient or themselves. As important is that the handler has sufficient competent supervision in the workplace to ensure that good practice is maintained.

In addition the employees have to be willing to receive training. This puts responsibilities on the handler to ensure that they attend moving and handling training if it has been provided and they have been given the time to attend. The specifics of training are not defined, but terms such as ‘understandable’ and ‘suitable and sufficient’ are often used. This allows for a degree of creativity in delivering training so that on the job training can be as effective, if not more, than classroom-based training. The important thing is that any training carried out must be documented as to its content, date of delivery and where, with the handler and the trainer signing a document confirming this. If this does not happen then in the case of injury to staff or patient it is not possible to prove what training has taken place.

For more information on the HASWA see link below:

www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSWR)

These regulations set out broad duties for improving health and safety, and introduce the requirements for risk assessment and health and safety.

The MHSWR require employers to carry out risk assessments on tasks considered to be hazardous in the workplace and reduce risks to a reasonably practicable level. These risk assessments must be carried out by a competent person.

A résumé of the main terms of the regulations is given in Figure 1.2. The term reasonably practicable is used in the regulations and there is a definition of this term below.

Reasonably practicable means that which is, or was at a particular time, reasonably able to be done to ensure health and safety, taking into account and weighing up all relevant matters including:

1. The likelihood of the hazard or the risk concerned occurring.
2. The degree of harm that might result from the hazard or the risk.
3. What the person concerned knows, or ought reasonably to know, about the hazard or risk, and ways of eliminating or minimising the risk.
4. The availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or minimise the risk.
5. Assessing if the cost of eliminating or reducing the risk is grossly disproportionate to the actual risk.

The general terms of the MHSWR can be easily applied to moving and handling activities, but the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 as amended in 2002 (MHOR) are regulations that apply directly to the area.

Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 as amended 2002 (MHOR)

These regulations again define the responsibilities of employers and employees.

The MHOR also gives us a definition of manual handling:

• Any transporting or supporting of a load (including the lifting, putting down, pushing, pulling, carrying or moving thereof) by hand or bodily force.

The definition of a load by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines it as ‘a discrete moveable object. This includes, for example, a human patient receiving medical attention… ’

A résumé of the MHOR is given in Figure 1.3.

The interpretation of the MHOR directly affects all moving and handling practice. Avoiding patient handling is usually about maximising patient independence and constitutes the first key safe principle of moving and handling (see Chapter 5, Key safe principles of moving and handling). Assessing risk is key to all good patient handli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Title page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1 Theory
• Part 2 Practice
• Case study 1: Assessing a bariatric patient
• Case study 2: Managing leg ulcer dressings in the community (kneeling)
• Index
• EULA