Injury Rates Among Nursing Home Workers Alarmingly High

Worker's Comp - is it all about the money?

According to Labor Department statistics, nursing home workers are accidentally injured on the job at a higher rate than workers in other sectors, including construction, manufacturing and mining.

The average number of skilled nursing facility workers injured on the job was 8.6 per 100 FTEs, compared to 5.6 workers in coal mines, 4.8 workers in tire manufacturing and 3.5 for building construction.

In nursing homes, injuries are often related to lifting patients, experiencing violent behavior from dementia residents, having contact with bodily fluids or interactions with infectious agents. One key to maintaining a safe environment is having a sound environmental services program.

Labor Department Secretary Hilda Solis said "Employers must know what injuries and illnesses are occurring in their workplaces in order to identify and correct systemic issues that put their workers at risk. We are concerned with poor record-keeping practices and programs that discourage workers from reporting injuries and illnesses."

Calif. has enacted a safe patient handling bill. It requires all general acute care hospitals to:

• Maintain a safe patient handling policy at all times for all patient care units.
• Provide trained life teams or other support staff trained in safe lifting techniques.
• Provide training to health care workers on the appropriate use of lifting devices and equipment to handle patients safely and the five areas of body exposure: vertical, lateral, bariatric, repositioning, andambulation.
• Purchase enough safe patient handling equipment to eliminate the need to conduct manual patient handling and transfers.
• Require a registered nurse, as the coordinator of care, to be responsible for the observation and direction of patient lifts and mobilization and participate as needed in patient handlingin accordance with the nurses job description
• Require employers to adopt a patient protection and health care worker back and musculoskeletal injury prevention plan as part of their injury and illness prevention program.

It also prohibits a hospital from taking disciplinary action against a health care worker who refuses to lift, reposition, or transfer a patient due to the worker's concerns about his or her patient's safety and his or her own personal safety and the lack of available trained lift team personnel or appropriate lifting equipment.

Perhaps we need laws like this for the long-term care industry. I do not know whether any states have these as yet.

However, what is more disturbing is the suggestion made that facilities discourage workers from reporting injuries and illnesses.

I am thinking this all has to do with worker's compensation claims and costs. Someone enlighten me here. And if this is the case of money trumping safety then that is not the kind of facility I would want my mom to consider.

How does your worker safety program stack up?

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