Lift Teams: An Effective Strategy in Safe Patient Handling

Despite all the national initiatives put forward to reduce patient handling injuries, health care organizations continue to struggle with the implementation of successful safe patient handling programs and injuries continue to occur amongst caregivers. Lift teams have proven to be an effective method in reducing patient handling injuries and should not be overlooked when seeking potential solutions to this problem (Charney & Gasterlum, 2001; Davis, 2001). This article will review the benefits of lift teams, describe the key components required to succeed with lift teams, and provide some lessons learned. Tampa General Hospital (TGH), a level one trauma center and Magnet® hospital with over 1,000 beds and 6,700 employees, has had a lift team in place for nine years.  Prior to the implementation of the lift team, the hospital was spending approximately one-half million dollars per year on patient handling injuries.  Since the inception of the program, it has seen a 92% reduction in cost, spending only $38,000 in 2010.

Short M, Shea J

Keywords: lift teams, evaluation, implementation, safe patient handling