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St. Francis Buys Equipment to Lift Patients Weighing Up to 800 Pounds

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 21:01 CDT

Jul. 11--PEORIA -- OSF Saint Francis Medical Center is trying to lighten the load for its employees.

The hospital, at a cost of more than $340,000, recently purchased equipment to lift people who weigh up to 800 pounds, weight previously shouldered by nurses and other staff members. In addition, earlier this year St. Francis hired 17 full-time employees for a lift team, which responds throughout the hospital to provide lifting assistance.

"The hospitalized patient weighs more than ever. Obesity is really an epidemic," said Linda Helle, patient care manager of the cardiac intensive care and cardiac rehab departments at St. Francis.

"And, we had all noticed the increased number of injuries among nurses, as a result."

Lift teams, a new approach in transferring patients that ensures safe movement and helps protect staff from injuries, is a growing trend in hospitals nationwide. The hospital also sees a return by cutting back on workplace injuries and related costs.

In 2003, St. Francis had 671 patients who weighed more than 400 pounds.

"I'm sure those numbers are far higher than that now," Helle said.

Before, if a large patient needed to be moved, a nurse would have to get as many as eight people, sometimes from other areas, to come and help. Now, someone calls the lift team, which arrives within several minutes and safely moves or lifts the patient with help of overhead hoists installed in many rooms or portable lifting equipment.

"Now, my employees no longer complain at the end of the day that my back is aching, and it gives the RN more time to perform her professional duties," said Helle, who chaired the process for a lift program during a pilot program last year.

"But the biggest difference that it made is the amount of dignity we have allowed these obese patients to have. It is easy on the patient and allows them privacy."

The pilot lift program ran during daytime hours in different areas; it worked well. They tried different kinds of equipment during that trial phase and there were no staff injuries because of handling patients, said Devon Kelly, manager for occupational injury and prevention at St. Francis.

In late January, administrators expanded the lift program to 24 hours, seven days a week throughout the entire hospital, Kelly said. In the first five months that the lift team has been in place hospitalwide, it has received 2,567 calls for 1,780 lifts and 787 patient turns.

Administrators already are seeing the benefits. The medical acute unit, for example, went from 17 staff injuries last year to just three injuries in the five months the lift team has been in place. Another medical floor, which was at high risk for nursing injuries, went from 14 injuries last year to none the first part of this year.

"It changed my job in that my employees are so much more satisfied," Helle said.

There isn't a weight minimum to determine if the lift team needs to be called; the standard is whether two staff members are needed to assist them.

"You can have a 500-pound patient who comes in walking and independent and the lift team wouldn't get called, and you could have someone who is 200 pounds and comatose and would be an appropriate patient for the lift team," Kelly said.

Most lift team patients weigh more than 250 pounds.

"The lift team is really just there to do the physical part for the nurse," Kelly said, stressing there are still nurses in the room when critical care patients are being moved.

It is going to take a little bit of time before everyone is comfortable calling on the lift team for help, Helle said, which will result in even fewer injuries.

"We are all very independent people and we think we can do it ourselves," Helle said. "We have that learning curve of planning, of saying . . . let me give the lift team that call. But you will never totally eliminate injury."

Other area hospitals also are looking at the concept.

Methodist Medical Center is exploring the type of lift assistance that will be used, said spokesman Duane Funk.

"Safe patient transfers are part of improving patient safety, as well as employee safety," Funk said.

Eventually, Helle thinks lift teams will be required by the state.

"The health-care industry is far behind other industries when it comes to heavy lifting by staff," Kelly said. "That is finally changing."

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Source: Journal Star

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