Firefighting, law enforcement and construction are all high-risk occupations, but would one ever consider nursing?Caregivers in hospitals and nursing homes have the same amount of risk for back injuries as other high-risk occupations, a recent Ohio State study shows.”If you look at one of the high risk occupations out there, it’s patient handlers,” said William S. Marras, professor and director of the Biodynamics Laboratory at the Ohio State Institute for Ergonomics.Nurses, nurse’s assistants and others that handle patients have to do a lot of lifting throughout the day, he said.”Patient lifting puts a lot of strain on the handler’s back,” said Pat Bertsche, manager for the OSU Institute for Ergonomics.The study was donein the biodynamics laboratory under realistic conditions to test the different techniques patient handlers may utilize to lift and reposition patients, Marras said. “We took one of the rooms and made it into a hospital room,” he said. “We identified all of the different techniques of lifting patients and repositioning patients in bed that were common or recommended.”Some of the techniques tested for lifting and repositioning patients included a bear hug lift, a technique in which two caregivers hook their arms under the arms of the patient and using assistance devices such as gait belts, a belt with handles that is worn around a patient’s waist and slip sheets, a device used for repositioning patients.A mix of students and caregivers from nursing homes performed these techniques, alone or in pairs, with a “patient,” a graduate student weighing 120 pounds, Marras said. To determine the stress on the spine, electrodes were placed on the lifters’ to read the electrical activity of the torso muscles, he said. A model was used to determine which motions of the body were safe and which caused injury.”We expected we would find that some techniques were acceptable and some were problematic,” he said. “But what we found is everything is bad.”Employees working by themselves to reposition a patient in bed posed the most risk for back injury, Bertsche said.The technique which posed the least amount of risk was two patient handlers repositioning a patient in bed with a slip sheet, she said.”It doesn’t matter whether you’re lifting with one person or with two people,” Marras said. “All of these techniques put a substantial portion of (patient-handlers) at risk.”Employers should consider using a type of mechanical lifting device to move patients, Bertsche said.A variety of people will benefit from the study, but the information has to get out and the industry has to make changes, she said.