Occupational Therapy Commons^™

Culture Change For Occupational Therapists On Safe Patient Handling And Mobility (Sphm): Advocacy For Sphm Policies For A National Organization., Guldana Alizakhova, Pam Kasyan-Howe, Kristin Domville, Lisa Schubert

Fall 2021 Virtual OTD Capstone Symposium

Safe patient handling and mobility is an ergonomic approach consisting of policies, programs, and equipment to reduce WMSD and facilitate a culture of safety among patients and healthcare practitioners. Due to occupational therapy’s established role in ergonomics, practitioners are skilled to utilize SPHM to provide evaluative, consultative, preventative, and therapeutic services to patients while preventing WMSDs to healthcare practitioners. Despite OT’s contributions to SPHM, occupational therapy practitioners are not recognized as leaders in SPHM. To address this problem, in the Spring 2021 meeting, the AOTA Representative Assembly was presented a request for action by a taskforce that also recognized this …