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772 Introduction to Safe Patient Handling
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Program Evaluation

By establishing evaluation procedures and a process for enhancing your safe patient handling program, you can periodically evaluate the effectiveness of your hospital’s efforts and ensure continuous safe patient handling improvement and long-term success. Below are a few evaluation steps to include.

  • Set goals that include worker safety: Leaders should include worker safety in their goals and measure whether they are meeting them.
  • Track the success of your program: Examine the number and type of patient handling injuries, the number of lost workdays or modified duty, and the root causes that led to these injuries. This data can help you identify opportunities for improvement.
  • Share results with your employees: Sharing safety trends motivates and instills pride among units to achieve success.
  • Gather feedback from staff who handle patients: Realize that every program will need adjustments after being put into practice. Even small changes can improve the use of equipment and worker engagement tremendously.

Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.

1-8. Which of the following is listed as a way to evaluate your safe patient handling program?