A model to measure the success of patient handling interventions in healthcare across the EU

Patient handling intervention strategies are many and varied. The focus of interventions has primarily been on the health, safety and welfare of care givers. Data from 4 EU focus groups and 2 world-wide expert panels were used to evaluate whether other types of outcomes were perceived as having relative importance. Qualitative and quantitative analysis showed that organisational and patient outcomes were also highly rated by the participants. The data had good agreement between the 4 different EU sources (Kendall’s Concordance significant at 0.005) and the 12 highest rated measures were considered eligible for inclusion in further study. In parallel, a wide ranging analysis of patient handling intervention literature was considered to evaluate the qualities of each individual study. Using the 12 most important outcomes from the initial study and the most appropriate and accessible measurement tools from the literature analysis, the Intervention Evaluation Tool (IET) is proposed. The IET is a single set of measurements that can be used for evaluating all organisational and individual patient handling interventions in healthcare.