Risk reduction in handling obese patients

Background: Hospital staff are exposed to significant risk in the manual handling and care of obese patients. Objectives: to illustrate how risk reduction call he achieved by means Of integrated measures, particularly alined at developing specific know-how among the operators, and the use of safety guidelines and technical aids for transferring obese patients in various situations. Methods: oil the basis of the recent literature, the present article reviews the technological aids and the preventive procedures that ensure safe transfer and health care of obese patients. Results: Many devices are available in the USA for the handling and assisting the obese patient; however much remains to be done for the development of specific equipment. In Italy, along with knowledge of the devices, specific competence needs to be promoted among the operators dealing with obese patients. Organizational and structural issues arise from this new specialty. Conclusions: An integrated approach, requiring suitable environments, ergonomic devices, standard procedures and personnel competence needs to be adopted in order to reduce the risk in health-care workers dealing with obese patient.