SUPPLEMENT: Safe Patient Handling & Movement: Long Term Care

Those words written by Mattei in 20131 sum up one of the most fundamental issues raised by residents and caregivers when using safe patient handling and movement (SPHM) equipment: that the use of the equipment seems impersonal and distant. To those uninitiated in the rationale underpinning SPHM, it does indeed appear to be both of those things. The evidence presented throughout this supplement, however, will demonstrate to the reader that for caregivers to provide optimum care to their residents, adopting safer ways of lifting, transferring, repositioning, and mobilizing residents needs to be embraced rather than regarded as one more change. The objectives of this module are identified in Table 1 and seek to embrace a 360-degree perspective of the specific challenges and solutions to reducing the number of manual handling injuries to caregivers working in a long term care (LTC) environment, while also improving the quality of care delivered to the residents.

Monaghan HM, Murray E, Severson L, Kissing J