Not Part of Being a Nurse

Years of lifting, transferring, and positioning patients take their toll on nurses—causing painful musculoskeletal (MSD) injuries which can end a nurse’s career and ruin his or her health. 

• 52 percent of nurses complain on chronic back pain and 38 percent suffer from pain severe enough to require leave from work. 
• Registered nurses rank eighth among all occupations for getting MSDs, getting injured at a higher rate than laborers, movers, and truck drivers.  Aides, orderlies, and attendants rank first among all occupations for getting MSDs as result of all the patient handling tasks they do.  (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Lost Work Time Injuries and Illnesses, 2003)
• MSDs are also caused by poorly designed work stations and the awkward positions nurses to assume to do their jobs.    

But there are solutions—nurses do not have to accept MSDs as part of their jobs.  Assistive patient handling and lifting devices are safer for the patient and for nursing personnel.  Better-designed lifting and transferring devices are now available—which are more cost effective for health care facilities to buy than to pay for worker’s comp for back-injured nurses. 

The union and your local Health and Safety Committee can make a difference in preventing MSDs—by assessing the ergonomic risks in all of the units and shifts and negotiating with management to get adequate numbers of appropriate devices and training for personnel.  Because the OSHA ergonomic standard was canceled by the Bush Administration and Congress in 2000, it is up to the union to negotiate for safe patient handling policies. 

Several UAN bargaining units have negotiated for no single manual lift policies, adequate lifting devices and training, as well as other solutions like lifting teams.  Here are examples of contract language on safer patient handling solutions.

UAN is a co-sponsor of the American Nurses Association’s Handle With Care Campaign.

Read resolutions on Safe Patient Handling and ergonomics passed by UAN’s National Labor Assembly.