Vancouver Coastal Health is committed to the creation of healthy healthcare workplaces. As musculoskeletal injury (MSI) rates related to patient handling are particularly high in residential care compared to other service areas, Employee Engagement in partnership with leadership and staff in all VCH owned and operated residential care facilities, rolled-out a 2 year multi-faceted project with the goal of reducing the MSI time loss injury rate from 10/100 FTE to 7.5/100 FTE in year one and 5/100 FTE in year two. The term of the project is January 2012 to March 2014. Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention (MSIP) Services is the lead team supporting sites.
Congratulations to residential care on their successful first year! Here are a few significant successes they accomplished.
- VCH invested $5M to install 487 ceiling lift over high risk beds. As of April 2012, ceiling lifts have been installed over 1,659 high-risk beds out of 1,845.
- Impact to date: ceiling-lift preventable injuries down 60%.
- 33 peer safety coaches are trained and actively providing ‘at the point of care’ peer support in 13 sites.
- Implementation of key initiatives include: Standards of practice for high risk resident care tasks, safer toileting practice guidelines, adaptive clothing programs, enhanced support to new employees, care plan and ADL enhancements.
- Stay Safe, behavioural change campaign, developed in partnership with Emily Carr and frontline workers.
- Collectively, the sites achieved their interim target: 7.2/100 FTE.
Moving into the second year of the program, we continue to stay the course, aiming for our final target goal of 5/100 FTE!
Workplace Health’s MSIP team will continue to commit deploying 80% of their resources and time to partnering with the site teams. Due to this project, services beyond residential care by MSIP teams will continue to be limited. We have further developed our intranet site with a variety of resources that may be helpful http://www.vcha.ca/ee/workplace_health/my_safety_at_work/msip_ergonomics/page_98269.htm
If you would like to learn more about the project or have any questions, please contact Catherine Fast, Executive Director or Helen Tam, Manager, Prevention Services, Workplace Health.