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Healthcare workers are well known to be at high risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) from patient handling. In 2011, California passed the Hospital Patient and Health Care Worker Injury Protection Act (AB 1136) that requires acute care hospitals to implement safe patient handling policies and programs to prevent patient handling injuries (PHIs). In 2014, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) established regulations to implement the safe patient handling law. The researchers who produced this paper aimed to: (1) assess the impact of the safe patient handling law and regulation on MSD prevention at the state level and (2) explore workers’ perceptions and experiences regarding the implementation of the safe patient handling policy, programs, and practices. The researchers used two approaches: (1) quantitative analysis of workers’ compensation (WC) data from 2007 to 2016 and (2) qualitative focus groups.

In conclusion, the study identified positive changes of reductions of MSD and PHI claims among hospital workers after the passage of California safe patient handling legislation. These findings may indicate positive impacts associated with the safe patient handling law and regulations; however, due to the limitation of the descriptive observation study design, the positive changes may not be attributed to the law. The study also described positive changes perceived by hospital workers and continuing challenges and barriers to address for improvement.

Research Questions

• What are healthcare workers’ knowledge and perceptions of the safe patient handling law?
• What are healthcare workers’ experiences in patient handling since the safe patient handling law passed?
• What are healthcare workers’ experiences on changes in safe patient handling policies and programs in their hospitals?
• What are healthcare workers’ involvement in implementing the safe patient handling policies and programs?
• What are healthcare workers’ perceptions about the safe patient handling program successes and challenges?
• What is needed to make patient handling tasks safer?

Key Takeaways

• MSD claims accounted for 40% of WC claims among healthcare workers in California in 2007-2016; the proportion was slightly higher among hospital workers (44%).
• During the post-legislation period, MSD and PHI claims decreased 4% and 14%, respectively, among hospital workers.
• Concerning injury characteristics, lower back claims were the most common PHI claims; upper extremity claims were the most common among overall MSD claims in hospital workers.
• In the literature, information on costs of MSDs and PHIs among healthcare workers are quite limited.

Citation

Lee, S.-J., Harrison, R., Lee, J. H., Stock, L. (2020). Impact of Safe Patient Handling Legislation on Musculoskeletal Disorders Among California Healthcare Workers: Labor Research and Evaluation (LRE) Grants. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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This study was part of CEO’s Labor Research and Evaluation Grants, and was produced outside of CEO’s standard research development process.