NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Guy Fragala from HEALTH CARE
DR. MARRAS: Our final report will be from Guy Fragala, reporting on the Health Care meeting.
DR. FRAGALA: I'd like to begin by saying the health care industry was really pleased to be included in this program because, oftentimes, we're thought of as the group that needs to care for the people who become sick and injured, and many forget about the risks involved in health care work.
If you look at the injury rates, the incidence rates for the health care industry is among the highest of all industries. We looked at case studies from acute care hospitals, from long-term care, and also at a worker training program, and one of the interesting things was that everyone focused on the real big part of the problem, which is lifting and handling patients.
We felt that was the big problem that needed to be dealt with in the health care industry because these loads are living, dynamic loads, and they're very, very heavy, and the tasks are difficult.
We talked about both administrative controls and engineering controls. The administrative controls were the use of lifting or transport teams where certain individuals did the lifting or transporting in a particular facility, and the case study that was presented demonstrates some successes.
The engineering controls are very primitive at this point in time. We have lifting aid devices in health care, but we're only at the very early stages in design. We've had devices for many years. Only recently have they begun to be improved, so we're seeing a lot of improvements right now and there are more devices becoming available.
Something else that was kind of interesting was that someone commented that the experience in health care was so bad with regard to workers' comp that some insurance carriers didn't even want to carry some of the long-term care facilities.
We talked about other variables that needed to be addressed, such as the resistance to change in nursing practice, because we're dealing with living loads, so a lot of people are resistant to engineering controls, so we have a lot of resistance to overcome.
Something else that's interesting is that nurses for many years expected that a back injury or a back pain was part of their trade. They expected to have this condition, so that's something else that needs to be overcome.
We identified many of the high-risk activities, and they were lifting and transporting patients and residents from beds to chairs, chairs to toilets, bathing tasks.
Something else that's interesting in health care is that we also need to consider the dignity of the resident or patient. When you're using lifting aid devices, the dignity issue is a big issue, and also the safety of the patient or resident.
We felt that if ergonomics is applied properly, not only will we improve things for the worker, but we can improve things for the resident and patients in our industries. We also noted that traditional programs which are focused on just teaching people how to lift have really not been successful, and we need to really focus on changing the job tasks in health care.
We did show that we can demonstrate successes. The case studies that were presented show that injury rates did drop when we applied both the administrative and the engineering controls.
We looked at some studies where engineering controls were put in place, and injury rates did drop.
We also noted that in the health care industry it's very important, as with other industries, for labor and management to work together, and we really need to involve the workers, those people who are involved in lifting and handling residents in the whole process.
My cochair for the session was Jamie Cohen, from the Service Employees International Union. We got done very late, and I lost Jamie on the way over here so, Jamie, if you're out there when we have the comment period, if there are any other items that I've missed that you'd like to add, please do so.
So, in summary, the health care industry we feel is a high-risk industry, and we're in the very early stages in applying ergonomics, but the studies that have been done thus far have shown that we can really reduce injury rates if we change the way this work is done.
Thank you.
DR. MARRAS: Thank you.
I'd like to thank all of the moderators.
