CATES: National Safety Month brings awareness to workplace safety

By Carol A. Cates, MSN, MBA, RN

Chief Nursing Officer

Odessa Regional Medical Center

Back in 2000, I was working in the ICU as a staff nurse on the night shift. I had a patient that was so weak that they could not move around in bed without someone helping them.

Patients like that who don’t move are at very high risk for bedsores, so in the nursing world, when we have a patient who cannot move for whatever reason on their own, we turn them from their sides onto their back or back from their back to their side about every two hours.

At about 3 o’clock in the morning, I was doing exactly that for my patient, turning them onto their side. As I was turning the patient, I felt a pop under my left shoulder blade. About 10 minutes later, my fingers on the left started to tingle, and by morning, I couldn’t hold anything in my left hand and my toes on the left were starting to tingle, too. Within six hours, I was in surgery.

When I turned that patient, I herniated three disks in my neck so badly it caused spinal cord compression. My x-rays are kind of scary because of the number of plates and screws in my neck to repair the damage. Having said that, I was very fortunate. I had great doctors and a great healthcare team taking care of me, and I healed without issues. I have had very few long-term side effects.

Unfortunately, not everyone has that outcome, and even for me, I couldn’t work for four months, and couldn’t go back to bedside nursing for more than a year. I had to leave my job and do a completely different kind of nursing. I was really worried about paying the bills at more than one point in those first few months after surgery. That is why injury prevention in the workplace is so important. It’s better to never have injuries in the first place.

The National Safety Council (NSC) tries to bring awareness to workplace safety and injury prevention with National Safety Month each June.

Every year in the U.S., there are about 2.8 million non-fatal workplace accidents. The most common injuries are sprains, strains, and tears. 327,650 of those injuries happened in 2019. The highest cause of injury are overexertion, slips, trips, falls, and contact with objects and equipment. Those 5 categories account for almost 85% of all injuries.

The highest rate of injuries nationally happens in nursing assistants, heavy truck and tractor-trailer drivers, and people who move objects from place to place. If you think about it, they all lift heavy objects (i.e. overexertion).

The rate for those people is about 350-370 injuries per 10,000 workers each year. Worse, in 2019, 5,333 people died on the job. Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting have the highest number of on-the-job fatalities. Transportation, warehousing, and construction aren’t far behind. Workplace injuries in the U.S. every year cost an estimated $250 billion.

There are many things you can do to prevent workplace injuries: Avoid slips, trips, and falls by keeping floors free of clutter, debris, and spills. Make sure work areas are well lit. Wear shoes that fit properly and provide good support. Use non-skid floor coverings in high-risk areas and make sure stairways have handrails that are in good repair. Avoid cuts and lacerations by keeping knife and cutting tool edges sharp, dull knives and cutting tools require more force which increases the chances the blade will slip.

Wear protective gloves when cutting, and don’t rush when handling knives and cutting tools. Avoid overexertion by using proper lifting techniques, using equipment to help with lifting whenever possible, or getting help when lifting. A good rule of thumb is never to lift more than 51 pounds without assistance.

Avoid contact with objects and equipment by wearing clothing that is unlikely to get “grabbed” by a machine, avoid loose long hair, dangling jewelry or anything else that could get tangled in a machine. Collisions don’t just happen on the road; they can happen with forklifts and handcarts, too.

Don’t multitask when you are driving any vehicle, and make sure you are alert and not over tired if you are operating a vehicle. Wear ear protection if you work in an environment where you are exposed to noises over 85 decibels (about as loud as a motorcycle), and make sure your workstation is set up ergonomically, so you avoid repetitive strain injuries as well.

I was injured because I failed to follow the 51-pound rule. It was a hard lesson. Be smarter than I was and be safe as you work. Not just in June as the NSC asks we remember the importance of workplace safety, but every day.