Patient & Family Campaign Updates

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Campaign Updates

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Patient & Family Campaign Home

Welcome to the web page of New Yorkers for Patient & Family Empowerment!

Please join our efforts to improve safety in healthcare, strengthen public access to information on patient safety, and empower patients, their families and caregivers in their interactions with the healthcare system in New York State.

We invite you to use this page to become more informed about your rights as a health consumer and to find information resources for yourself, a friend or a loved one. This page also provides links to hotlines for reporting complaints about hospitals, nursing homes, adult homes or individual practitioners, as well as links to other helpful sources of information.

If you share our concerns and agree that we can do more to improve patient safety, let your voice be heard! You are very welcome to sign up for our e-mail list so that you can receive timely alerts when important opportunities for education or advocacy arise.

An important initiative that is "gaining steam" in New York State is the need for "safe patient handling" systems in hospitals and nursing homes to avoid injuries to patients and healthcare workers.

The Centers for Disease Control's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends that no caregiver should manually lift more than 35 pounds of a person's body weight vertically (http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2010/05/t20100511a.html #_ftn9). When a hospital, nursing home or other health facility lacks modern equipment and comprehensive training on safe moving, repositioning and transferring of patients, the result can be bruises, pulled muscles, and more serious physical injuries — a risk both to the staff members and the patients involved. Other impacts can include stress, discomfort, fatigue and — especially for the patient — embarrassment or loss of a feeling of dignity.

While some health facilities have shown significant leadership on this issue, too many hospitals and nursing homes lag far behind in establishing effective, modern programs for state-of-the-art safety in moving, repositioning and transferring of patients who need such assistance.

This issue is so important that the New York State Department of Labor collaborated with the New York State Zero-Lift Task Force to sponsor the 5th Annual Safe Patient Handling Conference (http://labor.ny.gov/sphconference) on October 18-19 (at the Albany Marriott Hotel, 189 Wolf Road).

Does your nursing home or local hospital have a safe patient handling program in place? If not, is it planning to develop one?

To learn more about the importance of safe patient handling, go to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's webpage on this issue (http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/safepatient/). To learn more about what you can do to promote safe patient handling at hospitals and nursing homes in New York, join our e-mail list or call New Yorkers for Patient & Family Empowerment at 646-278-5689.