Picking People Up
People are not the best things to lift: They wiggle or move unexpectedly, you usually need to lift them in an area of the home that doesn’t allow for good body mechanics, and even the smallest adult weighs more than most people are capable of lifting. So what do most family caregivers do? They lift anyway.
Their motivation is usually good. The person they are caring for has to be moved. The caregiver is there to serve. What they don’t realize is that a back injury is just one transfer away- and you don’t know which transfer it is going to be. And just what is going to happen to the person needing to be moved when the caregiver can’t give care anymore?
According to the OSHA website, “Back disorders can develop gradually as a result of microtrauma brought about by repetitive activity over time or can be the product of a single traumatic event. Because of the slow and progressive onset of this internal injury, the condition is often ignored until the symptoms become acute, often resulting in disabling injury. Acute back injuries can be the immediate result of improper lifting techniques and/or lifting loads that are too heavy for the back to support. While the acute injury may seem to be caused by a single well-defined incident, the real cause is often a combined interaction of the observed stressor coupled with years of weakening of the musculoskeletal support mechanism by repetitive micro-trauma. Injuries can arise in muscle, ligament, vertebrae, and discs, either singly or in combination."
http://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/otm_vii/otm_vii_1.html
Many of us therapist spend a lot of time practicing transfers ourselves and teaching others the best ways we know of to manually move people from one surface to another. Unfortunately, many caregivers don’t receive or don’t remember the training and the areas like beds or small bathrooms don’t allow them to employ safe body mechanics. They are often not really assisting someone to move, but bodily moving them. There is some thought that for this type of lift “training caregivers how to use proper body mechanics to lift residents is not an effective prevention measure because lifting the weight of adult patients is intrinsically unsafe”
Safe Lifting and Movement of Nursing Home Residents CDC National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/ergonomics/default.html#lift
The good news is that there are ways to move people that don’t pose risks to caregivers or the people they are moving. It may be simple items like pivot disks or transfer boards, but there are also great pieces of equipment to use when a person is dependent upon others for lifting.
Motorized lift systems can be floor based, wall based, or ceiling based. The motor provides the lifting power. A ceiling based motor can be independently propelled or moved by a caregiver. Ceiling based systems don’t take up floor space and the caregiver doesn’t have to move the weight of the person and the lift.
Home Access Solutions is the exclusive dealer for SureHands Lift and Care Systems in Nebraska and much of Iowa. SureHands is the US distributor for Handimove International, so this is a system of products used around the world to help people stay in their homes. I chose to represent this product when I was looking for solutions for my clients, because of 3 things: flexibility, reliability, and the philosophy of the SureHands and Handimove companies. www.surehands.com
Problems with transfers drives too many people out of their homes and hurts too many caregivers! Don’t let that happen to you or someone you love! You can visit the Surehands web site at, give us a call at 402-291-9514 and talk to us about an evaluation to determine the right system for you. Please forward this video to people you know who really need to learn about safe ways to transfer. i.e. pick people up!
