IEA 2021 conference

We were delighted to have an opportunity to participate in the IEA (International Ergonomics Association) 2021 conference, originally planned to be held in Vancouver, Canada. We wanted to talk about our RENE project to the wider audience and to raise awareness of the educational situation in patient handling in Europe. Our ePoster presentation was based on the survey conducted in six European countries, in which we described the status of patient handling education in European higher educational institutions. You may see our poster below.

The organizer, the International Ergonomic Association, is a federation of ergonomics and human factors, aiming to develop more effective communication and cooperation between different organizations and societies and to advance the scientific and practical endeavors of ergonomics at international level. The associations’ mission is also to enhance the contribution of ergonomics discipline to the global society, thus the IEA and the RENE project have parallel ambitions, even though the scale is different.

The topic of the IEA conference this year was the emergence of new technologies, but the traditional topics on ergonomics and human factors were also presented. Naturally, the effects of COVID-19 on the working life were well represented. The researchers and professionals of ergonomics attending the conference experienced the consequences of the pandemic as the whole conference was held as online event. The different time zones made the synchronous attendance challenging, but the oral presentations and keynote speeches were recorded to enable the usage in more convenient time.

The RENE project was involved in the ePoster section, in Musculoskeletal Disorders-track. The topics on ePosters were diverse, and our poster “Patient handling education in Europe – critical points for development” was one of the few presentations dealing with patient handling. The other patient handling presentations explored for example the usage of ceiling mounted lift and mitigation of musculoskeletal injury risk (Gee et al. 2021) and patient handling in elderly care (Januaro et al. 2021). Patient handling did not have a special track this year, perhaps that is the reason for low amount of patient handling presentations? Our results on the work with RENE project indicate that the field of patient handling still needs lots of development; the education needs to be improved, and there is lot of work to do. The European wide framework should be established to guide the educational institutions, the number of practical lessons should be increased and safety issues included, the access to necessary assistive aids and devices should be expanded… just to mention few of the most important developmental needs. The RENE project and our consortium is a great example of the impact of the international cooperation, even though the collaboration should be enlarged to include more countries and other important stakeholders.

First half

Second half

18.6.2021

Marion Karppi

Turku University of Applied Sciences

References:

International Ergonomics Association https://iea.cc/

Presentations in IEA2021 conference: Leticia Bergamin Januario, Svend Erik Mathiassen, Matthew L Stevens, Andreas Holtermann, Gunnar Bergstöm and David M Hallman. 2021. Resident handlings in eldercare wards: are they associated with the development of musculoskeletal pain among the workers?

and

Melanie Gee and Remi Adejumo. 2021. Mitigation of Risk of Patient Handling during Rehabilitation Tasks.