Authors

  1. DAVIS, KRISTINE W. RN, CCRN, BSN

Article Content

I think that the tips in "Preventing Back Injuries: Back It Up" (Your Life, March 2007)* missed a very important component. If health care workers don't have access to patient-lifting and transferring equipment, no amount of fitness training or lifting techniques will prevent cumulative or acute back injury. Health care workers need to insist on access to equipment for lifting and transferring patients, as well as training on how and when to use it.

  
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Express your support for a national safe patient-handling bill introduced by U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr., of Michigan. Among other provisions, this bill would require facilities to provide adequate lifting and transferring equipment for nurses and other health care workers. The weights that health care workers are expected to manually lift and move would never be tolerated in other industries and shouldn't be tolerated in health care either.

 

-KRISTINE W. DAVIS, RN, CCRN, BSN

 

Cedar City, Utah

 

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