Mind Your Back!

Hello, welcome to my first blog. I am very excited about all this space to write in and look forward to bringing you some relevant and hopefully entertaining information. The topic for todays blog is back care. Of course these days, everyone has their mandatory manual handling training before they are allowed out on the floor or in to the clients' home, right? Whilst this is good practice, I am compelled to ask is it enough? I know it complies with the standards but is it actually working to prevent back injuries? Is it in fact being put into practice by staff or are they doing there own thing once they get out there? Cutting corners? Well, we are all pushed for time in this industry aren't  we? Lots of questions........ and I have a feeling they will lead to more questions rather than answers.
Does your facility have someone available to staff that can mentor and support them to adopt good practice in manual handling? If there is a person assigned this role... the OHS representative or perhaps it's the  physio in your organisation, whoever it is, what is their approach? Is it a big brother, "do as I say" approach? Is there room to soften the approach? Shift the focus from policing to support and dare I say it even 'dare to care' for direct care staff.
I believe that the way treat staff in our organisations ultimately determines how our clients and residents are treated. What I am trying to say is that the workplace culture,starts at the top with upper management and filters down through the ranks to direct care workers who have the most contact with clients.
Are staff pressured and stressed, feeling like they have to cut corners, feeling unsupported? These feelings can create the workplace culture, if we let them. Here are a few examples:
In your organisation, which shift is doing the lion's share of the showers? Are they all still being done in the morning or are some clients happy to have a lie in and have a late morning, early afternoon or evening shower? Cramming all the showers into one shift creates stress, and unhappiness (for staff and clients) This also creates stress on the backs and joints of staff who are repeatedly showering in a short period of time. In any 24 hour period showers and heavy manual handling tasks can be evenly spread out over the shifts to ensure everybody bears some of the load and reduces the strain on the body and stress in the mind.  I challenge you to talk to your clients and see if you can meet their needs and at the same time reduce manual handling strain.