Manual handling: what patient factors do nurses assess?

Abstract

Since 1990, the philosophy of 'safe lifting' has become unacceptable in clinical practice and it is now recommended that nurses do not manually lift patients at all. A comprehensive moving/handling assessment should be undertaken and should include assessment of the handler's capability as well as the load (patient), task and environment. This exploratory study focuses on assessment of the load, aiming to identify the patient variables nurses assess when planning moving/handling requirements of adult patients. Patient variables were identified from a literature review and provided the base for a semistructured postal questionnaire. Questionnaire responses were subjected to a Principal Component Factor analysis resulting in extrapolation of 5 factors accounting for the majority of variability in the data. In addition, a further 33 new patient variables were reported to be important in this type of assessment. Issues for further investigation are highlighted and implications for teaching moving/handling risk assessment are drawn from the findings.