oa Interprofessional education for safe patient handling during mobilization

Background: Inter-professional education (IPE) highlights collaborative practices aimed at promoting the working relationship between two or more healthcare professions¹. IPE achieves together more than what individuals can achieve to improve healthcare practices at an organizational level¹. In order to reduce the risk of injury during positioning and transfers of children admitted in the Almaha units, nursing, physical therapy, and occupational therapy professionals designed and implemented a competency training program to improve safe handling and mobilization of children.

The novelty in this program is that the training was conducted in the wardrooms with the children where the actual practice occurs². This context-specific training was designed after careful assessment of the real-time environment, complex needs of our children, and the presence of cumbersome life-saving equipment connected to their bodies. The education was delivered by rehabilitation professionals on five topics for a total of 134 nurses in Almaha units. Each session lasted 60 minutes with hands-on practice with a real patient. Methods: A pre-test/post-test design was used on a convenience sample of nurses for this pilot study. An observation-based checklist was designed by the authors to measure the nursing competencies in five tasks: Chair positioning, Bed positioning, Bed-to-chair and Chair-to-bed transfers, splint application, and utilizing powered wheelchairs. A rehabilitation professional completed the checklist for all participants by observation before the education. The same checklist was completed for 30 nurses, 6 months after the training. Results: The mean percentage scores improved for all tested patient handling competencies (Table 1; Figure 1). The mean percentage in improvement was 61.2% for the task of bed positioning. No further statistical tests were performed due to the small sample size. Conclusion: Inter-professional education provided in real-life settings was found to be effective in improving the safe handling and mobilization of children with complex needs.