Home Health & Hospice Week

You soon may have access to training materials that will help your visiting staff stay safe, thanks to a $1.8 million Centers for Disease Control grant.

University of Massachussetts Lowell won the CDC National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) funding "to research issues facing Massachusetts home-care nurses and aides and develop education and training programs," UMass Lowell says in a press release.

Previously: The grant builds on earlier NIOSH-funded work in which UMass Lowell evaluated the risks to home care workers associated with needlestick injuries and other blood exposures.

NIOSH offered a 51-page report, including safety checklists, based on its findings (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIX, No. 10, p. 76).

"We were really surprised at the seriousness of the conditions that home care nurses and aides confront on a daily basis," says Margaret Quinn, the study's principal investigator and a professor in UMass Lowell's Work Environment Department. "We uncovered a world where these 'invisible' workers face issues such as needles and dressings left on counters, cluttered rooms with no place to work and physical strain of lifting patients without assistive devices," Quinn says in the release. "At times, they encounter much more serious issues, including evidence of elder neglect and violence in the home or in the neighborhood."