Designed & created by
Gavin Wright
Terms & Conditions 30 Smilie, Peterlee, Co.Durham, England. SR8 4AN e-mail
Have you ever seen how a bungee jumper starts at one extreme then travels to another extreme before bouncing almost back to where he started from. With each subsequent tightening and slackening of the cord, he gets further from either extreme until he eventually settles in the middle.
Fight Lifting Bans
A web site worth reading but give yourself at least an hour to go through it.
That is the sort of analogy I think of when it comes to moving and handling of people. We went from lifting everyone (standing on the bridge in my analogy), to lifting no-one. The 2003 East Sussex case represented the full stretch of the cord. It was time to bounce back a little. Just as in real bungee jumping the jerk back to reality came as a bit of a shock to many people. It seems though that the journey upwards may have gone past that centre point and almost back to where the journey began.
Barry Wadeson, a man with many years experience in this field has written a web site entitled Fight Lifting Bans, where he argues that hoists are overused and that manually lifting should be the norm. Don’t immediately dismiss his claim without reading the site though. He makes many good arguments to support his claim and is currently in the process of writing a book to support his arguments.
I must clarify my last comment. I am not saying that I agree with his points of view, however, I also believe that we should look at the opposing arguments so that we can make informed decisions.
While I agree with some of Barry’s reasoning's, I feel that his arguments would be strengthened if he dropped some of his emotive language. For instance, on one page (http://fightliftingbans.org.uk/#/death-by-hoist/4541364410) he implies that Pat Alexander is being “coy”. I think anybody who knows Pat well would find it difficult to associate the terms “coy” with Pat. This reference stems from a term which is used by the MHRA and not one which Pat herself coined.
Barry’s web site has not been updated for a little while and there are some notable omissions from current thinking and practice, however, Barry told me that this will be reflected when he eventually gets round to bringing the site up to date.
Barry does not identify himself in his about me page and as such, this caused quite a bit of consternation in the moving and handling community wondering who this “traitor t the cause” was. It was easy enough to find out though. On the home page there was a link to an article which was written by Barry but also I simply looked to see who had registered the web site and Barrys name was there.
Going back to my original analogy, I believe that Barry has bounced a little too far back from where the Judge presiding over the East Sussex case was asking us to head towards. Maybe when he gets round to updating his site he will have come down from his extreme.... I doubt it... I think we are all (Barry included) on the same side, just some use more emotive language. Support and discussion will help us get to where we need to be not attacks on colleagues. What do you think about Barrys thoughts?
Your comments
Hi Gavin (and everyone else)
I have read a paper written by Barry. Whilst he writes well and has made a few good points, he is too emotive and seems to link hoisting and manual handling synonymously, almost ignoring other handle activities. By totally decrying safe handling and advocating manual lifting as the norm, Barry shows his naivety about the complex issues surrounding patient handling. I am sure he has his supporters and I am looking into some of the claims he has made.
With regards to the number of deaths caused by hoisting issues, this has to be put into context. How many hoisting episodes are there every day in the UK? If there are 21,000 care homes alone, with only one hoisting episode per day per home, that's 7,665000 per year or 38,325,000 episodes over the five years he quotes. The number of deaths = 0.00005%. of all hoisting episodes. I have not even taken into account hospitals, patients homes and so on. I also attended a conference presentation by Ruth Bolton that said there were 163 falls from hoists between 2001 and 2007. Using the same logic the percentage of falls from hoists is 0.0003% of all hoisting episodes, (assuming there were only 21000 care homes with only 1 lift per day in each). The number of hoisting episodes nationally is of course vastly higher and whilst both falls and deaths are inexcusable, is it truly the problem portrayed?
Were it a relative of mine who fell out of a hoist or died I would of course be devastated and probably want someone punished but I would not condemn the whole safe patient handling movement. We also have to consider the good that we do with the approaches we use and perhaps what should be further improved is training, equipment, supervision and so on, something most practitioners work towards anyway.
Enough of my diatribe.
Mike Betts
Former Chairman of the National Back Exchange
