Nurses looking for a lift
With 40 percent of the nurses blowing out their backs lifting bigger and bigger patients, health care workers in Washington state are asking the Legislature to approve an unprecedented “patient lifting bill.”
Julie Yakel, a nurse at Deaconess Medical Center’s intensive care unit, once had two patients weighing more than 500 pounds in one room.
“Three years ago, we had five nurses out with back injuries from the same patient,” Yakel said. He weighed more than 540 pounds, and he had to be turned at least every two hours to prevent bed sores.
“When you are short-staffed anyway, having five nurses out is a big deal,” she said.
House Bill 1672 would require hospitals to develop a safe patient-handling policy and establish committees to recommend how to implement those policies. It also would require hospitals to buy equipment within a certain time period still being worked out by lawmakers.
But with the legislative session winding to a close, the measure’s prognosis is uncertain.
The House could vote on the bill as early as today or Saturday, according to Chris Barton, a nurse and secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 Northwest. The SEIU and other health care workers unions support the bill.
The Washington State Hospital Association, while supporting the idea of preventing health-care worker injuries, has resisted the bill because of “unfunded mandates” that would cost hospitals millions, said Randy Revelle, the group’s vice president for policy and public affairs.
Revelle said the original bill as introduced by Rep. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma, would have cost the state’s 97 hospitals $227 million over four years, a figure union members rebut.
“We thought the original bill was outrageous,” Revelle said, adding that 30 percent of the state’s hospitals are operating in the red.
After negotiations with the bill’s supporters, Revelle said the current legislation would initially cost hospitals about $10 million to $15 million for lifting equipment.
That’s closer to the kind of bill the WSHA could support, Revelle said.
Carter Wright, of the Service Employees International Union, a major backer of the bill, said only one other state in the nation, Texas, has a similar law. It is weaker, however, requiring hospitals and nursing homes only to develop strategies to prevent injuries.
Bureau of Labor statistics show that hospitals in Washington have an injury rate that exceeds rates for workers in construction, agriculture, manufacturing and transportation. Nurses have more than a 40 percent annual rate of back injuries, and many nurses who are injured never return to nursing.
“Everybody knows someone who had to leave nursing because their back just gave out on them,” Wright said of SEIU members. “We’re all trying to deal with the nursing shortage, and it would be a good thing not to put someone out of their career because of a back injury.”