When you or a loved one checks into a hospital, maybe you get great care. But Injured Nurses reveals that if you could peek behind the employee’s side of the curtain, you would likely find that an epidemic is sweeping through the nursing staff: nursing employees suffer more debilitating back and arm injuries than any other occupation. And those injuries are caused mainly by doing their every day jobs of lifting and moving patients. Terry Cawthorn, whom we profiled in Part 3, is one of the faces of this epidemic (http://www.npr.org/2015/02/18/385786650/injured-nurses-case-is-a-symptom-of-industry-problems). Cawthorn was in such excruciating pain one afternoon, after she helped a 300-pound patient move from the operating room gurney into bed, that her husband had to carry her from the car into their home and lay her on the floor. Cawthorn had major back surgery in the same hospital where she worked — the surgeon built a metal cage around her spine — and two days later, the hospital management fired her. They said as a result of her injury, Cawthorn was no longer fit to work. And here’s one of our most striking findings: studies show that hospitals can reduce the rate of injuries, dramatically. Yet, executives at most hospitals across the nation have done little about it. They’re largely ignoring the studies that show that when nursing staff move patients the way that nursing schools and hospitals have taught for a hundred years, they put such dangerous loads on their backs that they’re at high risk for serious injuries. We profile one major hospital in (Part 1) where top administrators ignored internal reports and warnings by their nursing staff that employees were frequently getting disabled. We profile another leading hospital where top administrators routinely covered up those injuries for years, and tried to prevent employees from getting the workers compensation they deserved. The main reasons: 1) Hospital administrators don’t want to spend the money they’d need upfront to buy equipment to move patients mechanically — even though it would save them money in the long run. And 2) nursing staff has always been low down in the hospital world’s list of priorities. We discovered that the hospital industry has helped block efforts across the nation to pass state laws that would require hospitals to protect nursing staff from getting disabled. Meanwhile, we learned that the VA — which is often the subject of scandal — has quietly become the nation’s leading example of how to protect nursing employees from getting injured. With almost no publicity, the VA has spent more than $200 million in hospitals across the country to install motorized lifts to move patients — much like factories use hoists to move heavy parts. Results: they’ve dramatically reduced the rate of injuries among their nursing staff.
