I went to the mandatory education for new employees at the hospital today. We covered the lifting equipment. Our state has a new zero lift law, meaning hospitals must have zero lift equipment. Supposedly this is all to protect nurses, right? The ANA in our state is taking all the credit for the law, heralding in a new age for the nurses of today and tomorrow.
I found out today that under the new law, if the hospital has given you the ed on the equipment and you hurt your back, you're out of luck for any L&I claim if injured. The irony is, we had to search the whole hospital for an available sit to stand lift device and a hoyer lift device. So, you're required to use the equipment, but there aren't enough of them to go around. The two hoyers on one floor were in isolation rooms, and this education woman told me that if I needed one I'd be required to get one out of the isolation room, clean it, and then use it.
So, as usual, nurses will get burned under this new law that is disguised as something to help them. They must use the equipment, even if it takes them half the day to hunt one down. I for one will be charting "no zero lift equipment available at this time so patient on bed rest"
yea, our hospital is going to be starting bariatric surgery soon. So they purchased the minimial in zero lift equipment. One sit-to-stand machine, that you have to be an engineer to operate! None of the patients want anything to do with it. They would rather you all haul on them. A couple of slide sheets...but the patient that is way down in bed, SOB doesn't want to wait till that is found and in place, they want to be pulled up now! so they can breath.
our Hoyer lifts don't go all the way to the floor. So if that is where your patient happens to be, your out of luck making up that last inch to hook the hoyer pad to the lift.
and our bariatric equipment is so big and cumbersome. It takes two people to carry the commode to a room.
I actually love our geriatric equipment. My complaints though is the rooms are not big enough to use the equipment in an efficient manner. We end up having to move so much of the furniture around to make way for the equipment it defeats the purpose.
We went top having bariatric equipment approx. 5 years ago. The amount of injuries our staff were having have been reduced tremendously. We are lucky in that all of our equipment is on our own unit. The easiest and best have been the maxi slidders which appears to be nothing more than a like a parachute material. It makes moving the patient up in bed a dream. Those are available above the beds in a container for each one of the patients. We also have the Opera which can lift a patient up off the floor. A blessing.
There are down sides, as I mentioned when the room are small. Once you get use to the equipment though you will wonder how you worked without them.
So I think we can all agree, if you have good equipment available, then we'll happily use it. We don't have to be forced to use it. But if the equipment is unavailable, then it's just another case of darned if you do (how dare you make the customers unhappy by making them wait for you to search 5 floors for equipment!) and darned if you don't (a bad back and a write up for not using the equipment you couldn't find.
fYes, the sliders are a nice, low tech solution. Unfortunately, I was told, that many of them disappeared due to theft. Did you know those cost $200 a set?
i sent this email letter to my legislators. i changed some identify things:
dear joe schmoe,
yesterday i did an orientation day at 'for profit general' where i've taken a per diem rn position. this included learning about their lift equipment. i was informed by the instructor that use of this lift equipment is now mandatory, and if an employee fails to use it and is injured, that person is ineligible to make a claim under l&i.
i've been working at 'for profit' since april as an agency nurse, first on a 13 week contract , then picking up per diem agency shifts. during that time i have seen very little use and/or availability of the lift machines. during this orientation session the instructor had to search the entire hospital for an available hoyer lift to use for the demonstration. the two hoyer lifts on acu were tied up in mrsa isolation rooms. there was no sit to stand device available and one had to be obtained from rehab upstairs. in short, the availability of these machines in a timely manner is deficient.
as you might remember from our previous conversations, i worked previously at 'cushy community hospital' in 'smallsville'. there, they installed lifting machinery on the ceilings of most of the rooms in the med/surg units. in the ccu/icu unit where i worked, there are ceiling lift devices and also easy availability of the portable lift devices. this is not the case at 'for profit general', which is probably more the norm since the 'smallsville' hospital is a fairly cushy hospital in terms of staffing and work conditions. in 'smallsville' they really went all out in meeting the new requirements.
the 'state chapter of the ana and this state' have been loudly tooting their own horns that they have protected health care workers with this law. from what i learned yesterday, however, the legislation is really a trojan horse to save the hospital and state from l&i claims. in order to truly protect the nurses and others working with an increasing obese and debilitated population, there must be enough equipment available in a timely manner, and enough storage space to house that equipment. this is not the case at 'for profit general', nor at many other hospitals throughout the state.
We have a similar rule at my hospital - they don't pay out if you hurt yourself lifting a patient on your own. The difference is that we have a "lift team" that we're supposed to call. They're under-utilized by the nurses on my unit, but they're actually a great resource. They make it up usually within about 15-20 minutes of a page (better for intubated patients that need regular repositioning than getting a med-surg pt up to pee), and I just tell my larger patients (the ones that aren't sedated) that I'm not allowed to lift them, and that I paged the team that is. Lift team has access to all the fancy equipment too, and they use it regularly and understand how it works. It's a suggestion for your hospital - they cost money, but I don't think they make much more than techs. Most of them are in school for nursing, RT, pre-med, etc.
Write a letter to your state representative informing them of your hospital's situation. Many of these laws, when I researched this topic, delineated exactly how much lifting equipment must be maintained by facilities. State funding may have been provided for as part of this new law.
Did you know those cost $200 a set? 
CathyLew
463 Posts
yea, our hospital is going to be starting bariatric surgery soon. So they purchased the minimial in zero lift equipment. One sit-to-stand machine, that you have to be an engineer to operate! None of the patients want anything to do with it. They would rather you all haul on them. A couple of slide sheets...but the patient that is way down in bed, SOB doesn't want to wait till that is found and in place, they want to be pulled up now! so they can breath.
our Hoyer lifts don't go all the way to the floor. So if that is where your patient happens to be, your out of luck making up that last inch to hook the hoyer pad to the lift.
and our bariatric equipment is so big and cumbersome. It takes two people to carry the commode to a room.