Safe patient handling

The overall goal with the research project Patient And Workers Safety Study(PAWSS), is to promote a safe healthcare environment for both healthcare workers and patients.

Our main focus now is to develop a strategy including education, guideline, risk assessment and interventions promoting safe patient manual handling in healthcare. The strategy will be implemented and evaluated in hospital wards and nursing homes in southeast Sweden.

Different studies of the project

For several years our research team has conducted research with focus on health care workers incidents, injuries and situations at the workplace were they occurred. We have also studied patient injuries with a special interest of falls.

Take part of one of our publications:
Patient and healthcare worker safety risks and injuries - learning from incident reporting External link.

In an interview study we studied health care workers’ experiences of incidents at the workplace posing a risk of injury to workers and patients. The study is completed and submitted for publication.

Since 2019, we have a special focus on how to promote safe patient manual handling. The title of this study is Development and evaluation of risk assessment and interventions promoting safe patient manual handling in the Swedish healthcare sector. We are using a participatory approch in the development process of education, guidelines and interventions that are being used. We collaborate with a network where different stakeholderas are represented; employers, employer organisations, union representatives, Swedish work environment authority and HR representative

The Swedish Reserach team

Charlotte Wåhlin, Associate professor, Ergonomist/RPT, Region Östergötland and Linköping University

Sebastian Buck, PhD-student, Ergonomist/RPT, Region Östergötland and Linköping University

Emma Nilsing Strid, PhD/RPT, Region Örebro län and Örebro University

Jan Sandqvist, University lecture, PhD/OT, Linköping University, Linköping

Paul Enthoven, Associate professor, University lecture, RPT

Maria Andreassen, Researcher/OT, Linköping University and the Municipality of Linköping

Jenni Fock, Registered Nurse, change management in health care, Region Östergötland

Occupational and Environmental Medicine Centre, Region Östergötland

For more information about the research project you are welcome to contact:

PI Charlotte Wåhlin, Associate professor, Ergonomist/RPT.
charlotte.wahlin@regionostergotland.se
Charlotte Wåhlins ORCID: 0000-0001-7847-7528 External link.

Project-coordinator Sebastian Buck, PhD student, Ergonomist/RPT. sebastian.buck@regionostergotland.se