BIOMECHANICAL EVALUATION OF PATIENT HANDLING TECHNOLOGY IN PATIENT HANDLING ACTIVITIES BETWEEN BED AND WHEELCHAIR

• Main Author: STIANDI GANDA NIM 13414095 , CATHERINE
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/26214
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Nursing remains one of the top highest risk occupation for work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). The main cause is an incorrect posture changes repeatedly when the nurse performs manual patient handling activity that causes pressure on the same body part for a long period of time. Nurses usually have responsibility to handle disability patients who need more attention and care from caregiver. Patient Handling Technology (PHT), in the form of a patient floor lift, as another metode for patient handling, has been developed in Indonesia, but still need some evaluations. In this study, the use of the PHT prototype is evaluated using various biomechanical methods for disability patient handling activity (hand-foot paralysis), then assessed whether the use of the ABPP prototype can reduce the risk of MSDs injury to nurses when compared with manual method. <br /> <br /> Biomechanical evaluation includes postural analysis using REBA and RULA and postural modeling with 3DSSPP software to obtain compression and shear forces. In addition, the analysis is expanded in terms of patient handling time and the use the Borg scale to estimate perceived pain intensity by nurse during the patient handling activity. The study involved 12 nurses and 1 disability patient. The experimental design is within subject design, so each nurse performs patient handling activity 2 times, both manually and using PHT prototype. <br /> <br /> The experimental results show that the use of the PHT prototype is useful to reduce the risk of low back pain for the nurses because both the compression force and shear force values obtained are below the recommended safe limit and hence smaller than manual method. Postural analysis results with REBA and RULA show that PHT prototype can reduce the risk of MSDs injury into negligible risk to medium risk and only requires action level 1 and 2. The amount of pain perceived from patient handling activity using PHT prototype also decreases to 55%. The use of the PHT prototype takes considerably longer time than manual method. Therefore, the PHT prototype should be use limited only to normal hours with more restrictive time limits. It is also important to give training for nurses and strong commitments from the management to implement safe and sustainable patient handling programs.