Safe Patient Handling among STNA’s in Nursing Homes: Compliance, Monitoring, and Continuous Quality Improvement of Best Practices

Lost productivity from lower back injuries in workplaces costs over $100 billions a year in the United States alone. A significant fraction of such workplace injuries are the result of workers not following best practices. Previous studies have shown that a multifaceted approach should be used to improve the situation. Hence, in this project, we are integrating body mechanics training and a technology-based real-time compliance tracking and intervention solution to reduce workplace injuries. The goals of the project include:

In this project, we developed a novel computer-vision based system to track the activities of consented workers using the depth sensors, alert them on detection of non-compliant activities, and produce cumulative reports on their performance. Essentially, the system provides a valuable set of services for both workers and administrators towards a healthier, and therefore, more productive workplace..

According to several comprehensive surveys on the intervention programs, training on body mechanisms itself has either no effect on reducing the injury rate of nurses and nursing assistants, or only short-term effect. Previous studies show that the assessment process in competency training typically lacks consistency and is uncertain. We have created educational modules to help train STNAs and adapted our compliance tracking system for competence training.