Patient Handling in the Healthcare Sector

Book excerpt: Hospital staff and caregivers are regularly exposed to biomechanical overload risk, particularly at spine and shoulder level—a risk factor that will continue to rise with the progressive aging of the population. Patient Handling in the Healthcare Sector: A Guide for Risk Management with MAPO Methodology (Movement and Assistance of Hospital Patients) details the analysis of patient handling risk using the MAPO method in different areas of healthcare and helps you develop strategies to mitigate them. Focusing on the organization of work, this approach gives you the tools to: Rapidly analyse the problem Rapidly identify solutions Effectively monitor the results of preventive actions One of the special features of this approach is that it employs tools that allow you to allocate financial resources to estimate what investments are needed to achieve specific results. This means taking the decision-making process out of the hands of ergonomics experts and putting it into those of healthcare facility administrators.