We hope you will enjoy this review of safety materials produced for All Creatures Animal Hospital. This element of the campaign concerns the physical hazard of lifting heavy weights.
Lifting a reluctant St. Bernard or a fully anesthetized Suffolk ram can be a real pain. To reduce the risk of employee injury, All Creatures Animal Hospital is pleased to be implementing a program to “Lessen the Beastly Burden”.
Our program will utilize assistive devices to dramatically reduce the need to lift our largest patients. In January 2011 the small animal clinic will acquire two hydraulic lift exam tables, a transfer gurney, and sliding transfer device for the small animal surgery suite. The large animal clinic will acquire an overhead hoist for the large animal surgery suite.
This program will benefit employees in reducing the risk of back, shoulder, and knee injuries during lifts and injuries incurred from struggling animals in the exam and treatment rooms. Our animal patients will benefit from reduced stress during exams and safer transfers from our surgical prep areas to the operating rooms.
In-servicing on the new equipment will begin shortly after delivery.
We expect to benefit at several levels with the introduction of our assistive devices. Nursing homes implementing injury prevention programs minimizing manual lifting of patients experienced significant reductions in the incidence of musculoskeletal injuries and disorders and lost days of work among direct caregiving staff. Employees and patients also benefited from increased ease of transfers. Employers realized benefits in the form of reduced worker’s compensation costs, and savings realized from reduced turnover due to job related injuries. (1) Costs associated with acquiring transfer devices were quickly offset by savings realized from injury prevention and employee retention (2). Several occupational safety companies offer programs to assist workplaces with implementation of zero-lift programs (3). Adaptation of these programs can be made utilizing commonly available veterinary hospital equipment for animal hospitals (4).
References and resources:
1) Guidelines for Nursing Homes, Ergonomics for the Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
2) Lifting People, Research Profile, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Graduate School, Fall 2001, Vol. 24, No. 1
3) No Lift Program for Healthcare, WorkSafe Products, St. Louis, Mo
4) DRE Veterinary Supply
http://www.dreveterinary.com
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