Safer Patient Handling – Refresher

Course Description

 

This refresher course revisits the essential principles of safe patient handling, focusing on protecting both staff and patients from injury, promoting dignity, and ensuring legal compliance. Delivered online, it reinforces the correct techniques for moving, lifting, and transferring patients, and emphasises how to use handling aids effectively. The course is designed to be concise yet practical, updating participants on current good practice and any relevant changes since their original training.

Who is this for?

This course is for healthcare professionals and support workers who have already completed a Safer Patient Handling or manual-handling training course and now need to refresh their competence. Typical participants include nurses, care assistants, physiotherapists, porters, and other staff in hospitals, care homes, or community care settings who are involved in patient transfers, repositioning, or manual handling of people.

Course Content:

• Review of patient-handling legislation, duty of care, and risk management
• Basic manual handling principles applied to patient care (e.g., the “nine principles” of safe handling)
• Techniques for moving patients safely, including the use of slide sheets, hoists, and other handling aids
• Working collaboratively with others to transfer or reposition patients
• Handling tasks at low levels (e.g., bed to floor, floor to bed)
• Assessing the patient-handling environment and identifying risks
• Professional communication and teamwork during patient-handling tasks
• Maintaining patient dignity, comfort, and safety while providing care
• Preventing musculoskeletal injuries: protecting the back, neck, and limbs
• Real-world case studies or scenarios to reinforce good practice and decision-making
• End-of-course assessment: a multiple-choice test to confirm knowledge retention.

Course Benefits:

• Reinforce safe techniques for handling and transferring patients, reducing the risk of injury to both staff and those in their care
• Stay up to date with current legislation, good practice, and handling aids
• Improve confidence in using equipment like hoists and slide sheets correctly and safely
• Support a patient-centred approach by promoting dignity, comfort, and communication during handling
• Reduce musculoskeletal strain for staff, contributing to long-term wellbeing and reduced sick leave
• Demonstrate formal, up-to-date competence via a certificate, supporting compliance, audits, and professional development