Policies and Procedures and Safe Patient Handling

Policies and Procedures that Reflect the Value of Safety Culture

Policies and procedures that reflect the value of safety culture include:

• Develop, utilize, and disseminate policies, procedures, and educational materials that are integrated into standards of care such as how to manage patient handling during toileting (Rogers, 2020).
• Providing a safe non-punitive learning environment through simulation training centers that support training and outcome measures as a critical component of safety cultural change.
• Monitoring practice outcomes through quality improvement measures such as a reduction in staff injuries and patient falls that verify policies and procedures have been implemented (Elnitsky et al., 2014; Elnitsky et al., 2015; American Nurses Association, 2019).

Safety Culture and Safe Patient Handling and Mobility

A major role of the Safe Patient Handling and Mobility program is creating a culture of safety. In order for this to succeed, it is critical to have:

• Support from management and leadership
• Support from staff
• Knowledge transfer mechanisms to provide worker safety (Fadul, Brown, & Powell-Cope, 2014)
• A safe patient care environment (Hodgson & Matz, 2013)