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The health industry in Australia has evolved in the past 25 years with expectations and legislation around ‘manual handling’, or as we now know as ‘Hazardous Manual Tasks Training’.
I am sure you can relate to a time at work when you watched a 10 minute video on how to ‘bend your knees’ and ‘keep your back straight’ whilst lifting a box, or maybe you were lucky enough to have a quick demonstration of how to use a slide sheet before being thrust into the workforce where each day is completely different to the last!
How did this training translate into work that you do in your profession?
Did you find that this ‘technique based’ training didn’t quite live up to it’s ‘one size fits all’ expectation?
Neither did we!
In Australia, if we look at a snapshot of our industry….
There are approximately 11 million Australians admitted to hospital each year. 70,000 older Australians receive in-home support, 179,000 older Australians live in residential care facilities and 4.3 million Australians live with a disability that requires them to rely on daily support.
With so many people to support, there are many variations in the amount of support each person requires. With obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease on the rise, an aging population and many more tasks in your 8 hour shift – it can be a real challenge to learn different manual handling techniques.
Safe Work Practice underlines that anatomy and biomechanics (physics of the human body) DON’T change, however the industry has forever changing standards, legislation, new equipment – it can be hard to keep up!
Why reinvent the wheel?
Safe Work Practice courses are based on PRINCIPLES of ‘manual handling’ and are not limited by step-by-step techniques. By empowering workers with principles, they are receiving essential tools that they can adapt to ever-changing patient/client needs without the need for additional Safe Work Instructions or training.
By using 5 simple principles with a background ‘Hazard Management Approach’, all tasks can be risk assessed and risk managed in real time ‘on the job’.
Safe Work Practice courses are suitable for both clinical and non-clinical industries and particularly aligned to health, disability and aged care. The Australian College of Nursing has endorsed the safe Work Practice courses suite.
Find out more. Kineo, we’re here to help.
