“Assisted Living Technology Educational Center” as part of the “Ergonomic Concept”

Our aim is to reduce the number of work-accidents related to transferring patients/citizens. We are aiming to teach transferring from a rehabilitating perspective, which means we always focus on the citizen ́s abilities and try to preserve these.

There were 3 goals when the project was started: to reduce the number of work injuries (displacement), re-implement “from 2 to 1” (focus of one caregiver transferring the citizen instead of two) and establishing a common uniform ergonomics teaching across the areas of the Municipalities (before the teaching was distributed to the areas).

The project listed 12 areas to work with to reach the three goals - the Education Center is one of them. In the implementation phase, co-involvement of former teachers and the establishment of 15 working groups created the necessary ownership. It was very important to focus on work environment and among educators and to deal with their fear of not being good enough compared to the others. This very involving way of working with the implementation paid off, because the teachers moved from mostly sceptical to mostly enthusiastic in a very short time.

The main beneficiaries are the care staff, their leaders and the citizens. The main target group are the employees who are caregivers to senior citizens who are vulnerable, sick and in bad condition.