ABSTRACT
Patient handling intervention strategies arc 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 showed 12 outcomes as being of the highest priority with good agreement between the 4 EU sources (Kendall's Concordance significant at 0.005). In parallel, a systematic analysis of patient handling intervention literature was considered to evaluate the qualities of each 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 (lET) is proposed. The lET is a single set of measurements that can be used for evaluating all organisational and individual patient handling interventions. The lET has been triallcd at 2 sites in 4 EU countries.
