When Work Isn’t Safe: Breaking Down The Nursing Injury Epidemic

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We’ve been in the disability insurance field for a long time, and there’s one thing we’ve noticed over the years: Nurses get injured – and those injuries often leave them disabled.

Is epidemic really the appropriate term to use? It is, because these injuries are more common than you could have ever imagined:

• 9,000 healthcare workers sustain a disabling on-the-job injury every day.
• Last year, that amounted to $16 billion in workers compensation benefits.
• It also totaled another $10 billion in lost work days and employee turnover.

It’s a high-dollar issue for employers, but more importantly, it’s devastating to the hospital workers who find themselves living and working in pain.

There are more than 3.2 million nurses in America. Their profession requires intense intellectual focus and concentration and the physical demand on a working nurse is mind-blowing.

For example, the cumulative weight lifted by a healthcare worker in an average eight-hour shift is 1.8 tons. Most nurses work three 12-hour shifts per week, meaning they are lifting cumulative weight upwards of seven tons on a weekly basis.

In this episode, we dive further into this issue and explore:

• What causes injuries in hospital workers
• The effect of those injuries
• What can be done to reduce the risk of injury
• How hospital workers can take their safety into their own hands

Don’t have time to listen? We have you covered. Show notes for this episode will be posted on Monday.