Bernard Valencia's room in the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif., illustrates how hospitals across the country could fight a nationwide epidemic. As soon as you enter the room, you can see one of the main strategies: A hook hangs from a metal track that runs across the ceiling. This isn't some bizarre way of fighting hospital-acquired infections or preventing the staff from getting needle sticks. The contraption is a ceiling hoist designed to lift and move patients with a motor instead of muscle. As NPR has reported in our investigative series Injured Nurses, nursing employees suffer more debilitating back and other injuries than almost any other occupation — and they get those injuries mainly from doing the everyday tasks of lifting and moving patients.
The nurses at St. Vincent Hospital are celebrating a recently ratified three-year contract that provides better health benefits, a raise, and commitments to grow staffing levels in different departments. The 700 union nurses at the Worcester hospital, which is a part of the nationwide hospital system Tenet Healthcare, have been negotiating a new contract since November 2013. After more than 20 negotiating sessions, the hospital and the union reached an agreement on Feb. 3, which was ratified by the nurses on Feb. 18. Considering the economic climate many hospitals find themselves in, with dwindling reimbursements and mounting technology needs, the contract is a surprising win for nurses of the public, for-profit institution.
Caring for patients can be "organized chaos," nurses say. As the foot soldiers of health care, they function at the pressure point, the front lines of the war zone, where "you have to be flawless." "You can't make one mistake," said Daniel Griffiths, 47, of Greenfield, a nurse at UPMC Montefiore. "It's physically draining. You're on your feet for a 12-hour shift." It helps explain why stress levels in nursing can lead to mental and physical exhaustion, burnout, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure and sleep disorders, with occupational hazards trespassing onto one's free time.
The case of Terry Cawthorn and Mission Hospital, in Asheville, N.C., gives a glimpse of how some hospital officials around the country have shrugged off an epidemic. Cawthorn was a nurse at Mission for more than 20 years. Her supervisor testified under oath that she was "one of my most reliable employees." Then, as with other nurses described this month in the NPR investigative seriesInjured Nurses, a back injury derailed Cawthorn's career. Nursing employees suffer more debilitating back and other body injuries than almost any other occupation, and most of those injuries are caused by lifting and moving patients.
Scientists say nurses like Sunny Vespico are prime examples of what nursing schools and hospitals are doing wrong: They keep teaching nursing employees how to lift and move patients in ways that could inadvertently result in career-ending back injuries. Vespico, a registered nurse, was working the night shift in the intensive care unit at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia on March 31, 2012. At roughly 12:30 a.m., a large patient was having trouble breathing, so Vespico and a nursing assistant moved her to a special air bed designed for patients with respiratory problems.
Three seniors in the nursing program at the SUNY College at Brockport follow professor Jennifer Chesebro through a long nondescript room with eight occupied hospital beds along the walls. Chesebro addresses each patient by name, and handles them with the tender touch that she's developed in 21 years of nursing. Each patient has their own unique ailments for the students to practice treating, but they stare up with hard fixed plastic eyes. The patients in this room don't respond to their caregivers — they're mannequins. Here, and in another demonstration lab across the hall, students practice drawing blood, inserting IVs, and moving patients.