Nursing Practice In Nursing

In this essay I will be discussing the difference in nursing practice regarding manual handling and how it has evolved over the years. Extensive amounts of thought, new equipment and procedures have gone into the present manual handling practices. Many injuries have occurred over the years due to lifting, twisting and bending the wrong way. There are constant improvements being made to assist workers with manual handling and avoid further injuries. In past nurses had minimal aids to assist them with moving or transferring patients, this has resulted in extensive amounts of injuries caused to nurses bodies and a great risk to the patient they are dealing with. In 1988 Bureau of Labor Statistics ranking of the professions at the highest risk for back injury, healthcare workers accounted for 6 of the top 10 positions. (D.Brown, RN, AJCC). The occupation most likely to suffer injury within the health sector is nursing – nurses account for 42% of all Work Safe claims and 47% of all back claims for the three years from 2005-06 to 2007-08 in hospitals and nursing homes. For this reason, the Australian Nursing Federation (Victoria Branch) implemented a no lifting policy in 1998. `No lifting’ principles now represent a state of knowledge which has achieved a change in manual handling practices throughout the health sector. This has led to reduced risk to staff
Communication and encouraging the patient to help where possible is the key to successfully transferring patients without sustaining injuries which has always been used in nursing. Risk assessment is also essential in managing manual handling safely. With the technology only to improve and successful communication I believe there will be a large decrease in the amount of injuries sustained by