Authors (including presenting author) :
FH HUI (1), TF LEUNG (1), LF CHAU (1), KW CHU (1), YH WONG (1)
Affiliation :
(1)Operating Room, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
Every Operating Room Instrument Store (ORIS) staff requires transferring 5-12kg surgical instrument tray or boxing from store rack to transport trolley up to 60 times a day. In average, each staff has to transfer over 380 trays or boxes per week and there is huge demand of instrument tray/box movement, about 19,000 per year. In past five years, two manual handling related injuries were reported in ORIS. We believe ORIS is a high risk area of such injury and quality improve is deem necessary.
Objectives :
To reduce incident of manual handling related injury in ORIS.
Methodology :
Method: This is a quality improvement project. Root cause analysis: 1. Some staff didn’t follow proper manual handling guideline. 2. The guideline of storage arrangement of heavy instrument trays was not being followed. 3. Existing instrument transfer and transport trolleys were not compatible to new instrument trays and orthopeadic implant boxes. 4. The tray weight was not clearly indicated. Interventions: New transport trolley & automatic lifting equipment for moving/lifting big and heavy instrument boxes and implants were purchased, tray weight of each instrument box/tray was clearly labeled and the location of relevant instrument trays/boxes in the instrument rack were arranged according to Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) manual handling principles. Training workshops were conducted to teach ORIS staff on proper use of all new assistive devices, manual handling techniques and the principles of manual handling.
Result & Outcome :
Results: Workshops of operating Microlift Pro-70 lifting device were conducted and 11 ORIS staff attended the training between in May 2019. Tray weight was labeled on over 1000 instrument trays/boxes, 20 and 40 new transfer trolleys and storage boxes were purchased respectively. In total, 235 instrument trays & boxes were relocated to appropriate sections of the instrument rack before June 2019. There was no manual handling related injury after the interventions. 91% of ORIS staff strongly agree and satisfy with the new manual handling measures. Conclusion: Manual handling training, environmental modification and use of assistive device reduce manual handling related injury in ORIS. Future plan: Handling and lifting heavy instrument trays/boxes are unavoidable in ORIS. Although there is no manual handling related incident after the interventions, repetitive heavy instrument trays/boxes handling may still pose a health risk to staff. To eliminate these risk factors, we are expecting to use new technology such robotic system to load, unload, lift and transfer heavy loads in future.
