PATIENT HANDLING REVIEW OF SYSTEMS: SafeWork NSW

Care for clients in healthcare involves the interaction between many different individuals, teams, procedures, processes and technologies. This complexity makes the healthcare system vulnerable during the normal course of work, which has the potential to result in an adverse event. From this perspective, healthcare services need to fully understand the complex work systems and processes involved in patient care to understand incidents and errors, and design better systems and processes.

The Patient Handling Injuries Review of Systems (PHIRES) Toolkit is based on a systems thinking-based accident analysis method, Rasmussen’s (1997) Accimap technique and WorkSafe Victoria’s guidance material on the review and revision of risk controls. The PHIRES Toolkit was designed to provide a standardized process for reviewing and revising risk controls following the report of an injury to staff in a hospital setting.

The Toolkit was developed to meet four primary purposes:
1. Improve compliance with Regulation 28(1)(c) of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations in Victoria, Australia, which requires workplaces to review and revise risk controls following the report of an MSD;
2. Optimise risk controls to prevent future patient handling injuries;
3. Optimise the allocation of resources to control the risks associated with patient handling; and
4. Improve collaboration across all levels of the healthcare system (e.g. patients, staff, health service management, regulators and government departments) in the prevention of patient handling injuries.