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Texas Passes Safe Lifting Law for Hospitals, Nursing Homes

The State of Texas has passed TX SB 1525, the first state legislation signed into law requiring hospitals and nursing homes to implement a safe patient handling and movement program. The legislation, a major priority of the Texas Nurses Association, was signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry June 17, 2005, and will take effect January 1, 2006. The safe handling and movement initiative is part of ANA's Nationwide State Legislative Agenda on Staffing where state nurses associations coordinate the enactment of legislation across the nation that is of importance to nurses and their patients. A number of other states continue working toward legislative protection of health care workers against preventable injury from manual patient lifting.

In 2003, ANA launched its “Handle with Care” campaign to promote safe patient handling and protect nurses from back and other injuries due to manual lifting. The Texas legislation requires hospitals and nursing homes to adopt a policy "to identify, assess, and develop strategies to control risk of injury to patients and nurses associated with the lifting, transferring, repositioning, or movement of a patient."

The policy must include "an evaluation of alternative ways to reduce risks associated with patient handling, including evaluation of equipment and the environment" and "restriction, to the extent feasible with existing equipment and aids, of manual patient handling or movement of all or most of a patient's weight to emergency, life-threatening, or otherwise exceptional circumstances."

The law also requires the plan to include "procedures for nurses to refuse to perform or be involved in patient handling or movement that the nurse believes in good faith will expose a patient or a nurse to an unacceptable risk of injury."