Do Technical Aids for Patient Handling Prevent Musculoskeletal Complaints in Health Care Workers?-A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies

The physical load ensuing from the repositioning and moving of patients puts health care workers at risk of musculoskeletal complaints. Technical equipment developed to aid with patient handling should reduce physical strain and workload; however, the efficacy of these aids in preventing musculoskel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2018-03, Vol.15 (3), p.476
Main Authors: Hegewald, Janice, Berge, Wera, Heinrich, Philipp, Staudte, Ronny, Freiberg, Alice, Scharfe, Julia, Girbig, Maria, Nienhaus, Albert, Seidler, Andreas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aids
Back pain
Clinical trials
Confidence intervals
Handling equipment
Health care
Health Personnel
Health risks
Humans
Injuries
Intervention
Life expectancy
Long term health care
Medical personnel
Moving and Lifting Patients - instrumentation
Moving and Lifting Patients - methods
Musculoskeletal Diseases - etiology
Musculoskeletal Diseases - prevention & control
Musculoskeletal System - injuries
Nurses
Nursing
Occupational Diseases - etiology
Occupational Diseases - prevention & control
Occupational health
Occupational Injuries - etiology
Occupational Injuries - prevention & control
Patient handling
Personnel management
Prevention
Randomization
Review
Risk
Studies
Systematic review
Workloads
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Summary:The physical load ensuing from the repositioning and moving of patients puts health care workers at risk of musculoskeletal complaints. Technical equipment developed to aid with patient handling should reduce physical strain and workload; however, the efficacy of these aids in preventing musculoskeletal disorders and complaints is still unclear. A systematic review of controlled intervention studies was conducted to examine if the risk of musculoskeletal complaints and disorders is reduced by technical patient handling equipment. MEDLINE /PubMed , EMBASE , Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED), and Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL ) were searched using terms for nursing, caregiving, technical aids, musculoskeletal injuries, and complaints. Randomized controlled trials and controlled before-after studies of interventions including technical patient handling equipment were included. The titles and abstracts of 9554 publications and 97 full-texts were screened by two reviewers. The qualitative synthesis included one randomized controlled trial (RCT) and ten controlled before-after studies. A meta-analysis of four studies resulted in a pooled risk ratio for musculoskeletal injury claims (post-intervention) of 0.78 (95% confidence interval 0.68-0.90). Overall, the methodological quality of the studies was poor and the results often based on administrative injury claim data, introducing potential selection bias. Interventions with technical patient handling aids appear to prevent musculoskeletal complaints, but the certainty of the evidence according to GRADE approach ranged from low to very low.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph15030476