Do Technical Aids for Patient Handling Prevent Musculoskeletal Complaints in Health Care Workers?-A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies.

Janice Hegewald,Albert Nienhaus,Ronny Staudte,Maria Girbig,Philipp Heinrich,Julia Scharfe,Wera Berge,Alice Freiberg,Andreas Seidler

doi:10.3390/ijerph15030476

Abstract

The physical load ensuing from the repositioning and moving of patients puts health care workers at risk of musculoskeletal complaints. Technical equipment developed to aid with patient handling should reduce physical strain and workload; however, the efficacy of these aids in preventing musculoskeletal disorders and complaints is still unclear. A systematic review of controlled intervention studies was conducted to examine if the risk of musculoskeletal complaints and disorders is reduced by technical patient handling equipment. MEDLINE®/PubMed®, EMBASE®, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED), and Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL®) were searched using terms for nursing, caregiving, technical aids, musculoskeletal injuries, and complaints. Randomized controlled trials and controlled before-after studies of interventions including technical patient handling equipment were included. The titles and abstracts of 9554 publications and 97 full-texts were screened by two reviewers. The qualitative synthesis included one randomized controlled trial (RCT) and ten controlled before-after studies. A meta-analysis of four studies resulted in a pooled risk ratio for musculoskeletal injury claims (post-intervention) of 0.78 (95% confidence interval 0.68–0.90). Overall, the methodological quality of the studies was poor and the results often based on administrative injury claim data, introducing potential selection bias. Interventions with technical patient handling aids appear to prevent musculoskeletal complaints, but the certainty of the evidence according to GRADE approach ranged from low to very low.

Highlights

Numerous studies report a risk of occupational back complaints due to lumbar disc disorders, sprains and strains among health care workers [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
A comprehensive search of the medical literature was performed to identify all controlled intervention studies examining whether providing technical patient handling aids to health care workers prevents musculoskeletal complaints and disorders
The review research question and subsequent study inclusion criteria were defined according to the PICO framework [36] as follows: a population (P) of health care workers, therapists, health care volunteers, and caregiving relatives between 15 and 70 years of age conducting patient handling and transfers, provided with technical patient handling equipment as an intervention (I) in comparison (C) to similar populations lacking equivalent equipment, in order to determine the impact of the technical patient handling equipment on the risk of complaints, disorders, or injuries to the upper or lower back and shoulder joints as outcomes (O) (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Numerous studies report a risk of occupational back complaints due to lumbar disc disorders, sprains and strains among health care workers [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. The U.S incidence rates in 2015 for nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses caused by sprains, strains, and disc tears were 18.7 per 1000 for. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 476; doi:10.3390/ijerph15030476 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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