Involving Employees
The Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation (OBWC) ergonomist visited the home and told administrators they had unrealistic expectations about the nursing staff's ability to manually lift and reposition residents.
After this site visit, management involved employees at every level to try and reduce injuries and slow down the turnover rate. More than 30 workers volunteered to look at tasks of moving and repositioning residents. They concluded that better body mechanics, which involved the traditional method of lifting and transferring residents at most nursing home, was not the answer. In fact, everyone determined there was no safe way to lift a resident other than with mechanical lifts.