What healthcare jobs involving direct patient care do not require heavy lifting?

ChristineN, BSN, RN · Sep 19, 2011

No job is ever going to require you to lift a 300lb pt by yourself. Most hospitals require you to lift 50lbs. Obviously with the obese pts such as your 300lb pt you could use a Hoyer lift and a fellow co-worker to help. I never move pts by myself, even if they are my size, as I could still end up hurting myself.

If you actually have a medical condition or a reason you are unable to do alot of lifting and are looking for the area of nursing for you, have you considered clinics, NICU, case management, and other options. There are lots of options in nursing that do not involve heavy lifting.

inforn43 · Aug 9, 2012

I would like more information about RN jobs that don't require lifting. I have destroyed my shoulders working as a CNA for over twenty years. I also want to dispute the last comment. Although you would never be required to lift a 300lb pt. completely on your own, nursing is a job where you cannot really predict what will happen. You will most likely have to pull a 300 lb pt up in bed. You will be required to lift a 300+ lb pt. with the assistance of another nurse or CNA. Many people especially heavy ones are afraid of Hoyer lifts and will refuse to be lifted in them. Additionally no one can ever predict exactly what will happen working as a nurse. People fall all the time and you are not going to just jump back and let them injure themselves, they slide down roll too far over and do things you wont even think of. When this happens you just do your best but you are rarely going to have time to get help. Also I have tried working in jobs where you would think there would not be lifting of heavy pts. Pediatrics and nurse management, but I always end up lifting so be careful. Plan ahead and get the type of education that you need to do the job that you can physically do.

LCinTraining · Aug 9, 2012

In our hospital patients are not given an option of using a hoyer lift or not. That decision is determined by therapy. If you are not strong enough to move yourself out of bed into a wheel chair with the assistance of a transfer board at maximum, you are a hoyer lift. I've never had a patient refuse the hoyer, and if they did, I'm sorry, my back is more important than your fear at that point. I love my job. I love the patient to patient work, but I also recognize that if I get injured lifting a patient, the patient will be injured as well. It is not safe for anyone at that point and it's hoyer or stay where you are.

Kumari12 · Oct 1, 2016

Hi. I am dealing with the lifting and back strain issue and would like to know which hospital you work at (and where in the country) since it seems your hospital has wise policies regarding lifting. Thanks! Kumari12

mindofmidwifery, ADN · Oct 2, 2016

The baby unit :)

NICUismylife, ADN, BSN, RN · Oct 2, 2016

Peds, NICU, L&D, dialysis, OR

SmilingBluEyes · Oct 3, 2016

Umm not dialysis. We have many very heavy patients that require assistance to and from their wheelchair and we have a lot of people who dialyze in beds that are hoyer lifts. While the hoyer is a wonderful thing, we find ourselves moving and shifting such patients often. Also, people come by ambulance and we are required to help the ambulance staff move the patient between stretcher and bed. PLUS there is a lot of moving of boxes/inventory and some of them are really quite heavy, such as boxes of saline.

So don't come to dialysis expecting to have it easy.

SmilingBluEyes · Oct 3, 2016

AND L/D? HA! Try moving and shifting in bed, a laboring 300 pound mom who is literally "dead" from the chest down cause she has an epidural. Or putting her legs in the stirrups for pushing (each leg can weigh in excess of 50 pounds)......Or moving such patients from bed to OR table. Oh, I did TONS of heavy lifting in L/D. Many times, after 12 hours of that, I would go home so sore I had to soak in a tub to move normally. It was hard, physical work.

In the OR, they have special slides to help with moving extremely obese and heavy patients, but lifting is a very real thing in the OR.

I think it would be helpful for people who actually have worked these various specialties to speak as to the lifting requirements.

SmilingBluEyes · Oct 3, 2016

The one job I actually had, that had no lifting requirement , was telephone triage in a doctor's office. But the pay was easily less than 1/2 what I got in the hospital. And you need to have actual nursing experience to expect to be hired in this capacity.

SmilingBluEyes · Oct 3, 2016

In our hospital patients are not given an option of using a hoyer lift or not. That decision is determined by therapy. If you are not strong enough to move yourself out of bed into a wheel chair with the assistance of a transfer board at maximum, you are a hoyer lift. I've never had a patient refuse the hoyer, and if they did, I'm sorry, my back is more important than your fear at that point. I love my job. I love the patient to patient work, but I also recognize that if I get injured lifting a patient, the patient will be injured as well. It is not safe for anyone at that point and it's hoyer or stay where you are.

Yes to all this. In our clinic, this is never even presented as a choice for the patient, but a safety issue. Had one refuse and I said, I could not safely get him into his chair, and he had the right to refuse, but his treatment would need to be cancelled. I told him for his safety as well as the protection of our backs, it was absolutely necessary. I also told him, I knew how scary a lift could be, as I have been in a hoyer myself, but we would explain every step of the way, what was going on, and listen if he was hurting. He ended up accepting and it was all good.