[The assessment of the risk due to the manual lifting of patients: the initial descriptive and analytical results on exposure levels]. / Valutazione del rischio da movimentazione manuale di pazienti: primi risultati descrittivi e analitici sui livelli di esposizione.

The paper reports the results of risk evaluation of patient lifting or moving obtained from a multicentre study on 216 wards, for both acute hospital patients and in geriatric residences. In all situations the exposure to patient lifting was assessed using a concise index (MAPO). Analysis of the results showed that only 9% of the workers could be considered as exposed to negligible risk (MAPO Index = 0-1.5); of these 95.7% worked in hospital wards and only 4.3% in geriatric wards. A further confirmation of the higher level of exposure of workers in long-term hospitalization was that 42.3% were exposed to elevated levels (MAPO Index > 5) compared with 27.7% observed in hospital ward workers. The mean values of the exposure index were 6.8 for hospital wards and 9.64 for geriatric residences and, although much higher in the latter, both categories showed high exposure. In the orthopaedic departments of the hospitals the values were higher than in the geriatric wards (MAPO Index = 10.1); medical and surgical departments showed values similar to the mean values observed in the geriatric wards. These high values were due to: severe shortage of equipment life lifting devices (95.5%) and minor aids (99.5%), partial inadequacy of the working environment (69.2%), poor training and information (96.1% lacking); only the supply of wheelchairs was adequate (65.8%). All of which points to an almost generalized non-observance of the regulations listed under Chapter V of Law No. 626/94. However, the proposed method of evaluation allows anyone who has to carry out prevention and improvement measures to identify priority criteria specifically aimed at the individual factors taken into consideration. By simulating an intervention for improvement aimed at equipment and training, 96% of the wards would be included in the negligible exposure class (MAPO Index 0-1.5).