Hospital Workers and Lifting Injuries
Musculoskeletal injuries, or musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), are among the most common injuries affecting health care workers, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In hospital settings, nurses and nursing assistants are at particularly high risk of MSDs due to lifting and moving patients. Indeed, OSHA reports that these hospital and health care workers have more than 18,000 days away from work due to injury, which is an injury rate of “more than five times the average for all industries.” While lifting and moving injuries can be prevented with proper techniques, issues such as the fast-paced environment, scheduling, and hospital worker fatigue can result in health care facility workers moving quickly and sustaining injuries.
When a hospital worker sustains a musculoskeletal injury or another type of injury due to lifting or moving a patient, that worker may be eligible for workers’ compensation benefits in Maryland. Our Maryland workers’ compensation lawyers can explain these injuries in more detail and tell you more about workers’ compensation benefits.
Lifting and Moving Patients Often Leads to Injury
Lifting, moving, and otherwise handling patients in hospitals and other health care facilities is difficult, physical work. Much too often, according to OSHA, health care workers — especially nurses and nursing assistants — sustain musculoskeletal injuries from this work, and those injuries usually result from overexertion. OSHA cites the following as patient handling tasks that commonly result in hospital worker injuries:
- Transferring patients;
- Repositioning patients;
- Working in awkward postures;
- Moving patients from a chair to a toilet and vice versa;
- Moving patients from a chair to a bed or vice versa;
- Moving a patient from a bathtub to a chair or vice versa;
- Repositioning a patient from side to side in a bed;
- Lifting a patient in a bed;
- Repositioning a patient in a chair; and
- Making a bed while the patient is in the bed.
Nurses and nursing assistants who perform these tasks most frequently cite sprains and strains as the type of injury that have incurred, and they most often injure shoulders or lower backs. Health care workers can reduce their risk of sustaining these types of lifting and moving injuries by practicing techniques learned in training and by using ergonomic lifting devices where available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Seeking Workers’ Compensation Benefits After a Patient Lifting Injury
Maryland workers’ compensation law requires that an injured worker show that their injury arose out of and occurred in the course of employment in order for it to be compensable. Even if a coworker or the injured worker was negligent, the injured worker can still be eligible for workers’ compensation since it is a no-fault system.
Given that nurses and nursing assistants are regularly tasked with patient handling and moving, the injuries that result from this work typically are determined to both arise out of and occur in the course of employment, but a workers’ compensation lawyer can discuss the specifics of your case with you.
Contact a Maryland Workers’ Compensation Attorney
Health care workers in hospital settings who have sustained lifting injuries should find out more about seeking workers’ compensation benefits. Lifting and moving patients are required tasks that often result in musculoskeletal injuries and disorders, and it is important for health care workers to receive proper care while they heal. In order to do so, it is critical to have covered care and wage-replacement benefits. One of the experienced Maryland hospital worker injury attorneys at the Law Offices of Steinhardt, Siskind and Lieberman, LLC can speak with you today about filing a workers’ compensation claim. We have years of experience assisting health care providers with workplace injuries in Maryland.
Sources:
cdc.gov/niosh/healthcare/prevention/sphm.html
osha.gov/healthcare/safe-patient-handling
