Weightlifting

[Michael Protenic Jr.]

I worked for four years in a nursing home, and must say the attrition rate
due to injury increased dramatically over that time. One reason was staff
reduction, mostly along the lines of "Professionalism"; i.e., R.N.'s becoming
supervisors and managers, L.P.N.'s becoming shift overseers and pill pushers,
while fewer Assistants were apportioned to greater numbers of highly
debilitated patients. The average for the firm in which I worked was 1
assistant per 8 patients in 1992, but 1 to 12 in 1995. We were considered
good, too.

Another point, however, must be made. The entire industry became deskilled
through fly-by-night schools set up to train assistants as quickly as
possible, without the proper screening or training for the physical demands
that were only increasing. This industry was "growth", and as such many
unemployed, regardless of talent, were lining up to try it. You could say,
like cattle to the slaughter...

Carrol Cox wrote:


> I read years ago that the most common disability among hospital employees
> was back trouble, and that most of those disabilities could be reduced to
> one label: understaffing. (That is, one lifting when the task calls for
> two; two lifting when the tasks calls for three; etc.)
>
> Does anyone know of recent studies that would bear on this? Is it true? Is
> it worse now than  it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?
>
> Carrol