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Certified Nurse Assistants and other persons who lift and position patients in nursing homes and hospitals should let
the legislators know they don't appreciate getting screwed.
SB 1525 refers to "nurses" meaning only those licensed by the Board of Nurses. Certified Nurse Assistants
are "certified" so they are excluded even though they do ALL the lifting/positioning in nursing homes and mostly ALL if not
ALL in hospitals. Then there are therapy people and others who need protection. This bill protects nobody because
"nurses" don't do the work and don't need protection. A gigantic intended fraud!
When I questioned why such a fraud was done the excuse: It would not have passed if CNAs were included.
I checked with a few legislators who denied this saying "they thought everybody was included."
There is an old question: how do you know when a politician lies? Answer: when their lips
move.
Texas Senate Bill 1525, “An Act Relating to Safe Patient Handling
and Movement Practices of Nurses in Hospitals and Nursing Homes,” introduced March 10, 2005, by author Senator Judith
Zaffirini (D) and Sponsor Representative Dianne Delisi (R), was signed into law by Governor Rick Perry (R) on June 17, 2005,
and became effective January 1, 2006.
With passage of SB 1525, Texas became the first state to mandate implementation
of policy for safe patient handling and movement programs by hospitals and nursing homes (“Texas Passes First Law for
Safe Patient Handling in America: Landmark
Legislation Protects Healthcare Workers and Patients from Injury Related to Manual Patient Lifting.” Mary Anne Hudson. September/October 2005. Journal of Long-Term Effects of Medical Implants. 15(5): 559-566).
The Texas law requires
hospitals and nursing homes to establish a policy to identify, assess, and develop methods of controlling the risk of injury
to patients and nurses associated with lifting, transferring, repositioning, and movement of patients; to evaluate alternative
methods from manual lifting to reduce the risk of injury from patient lifting, including equipment and patient care environment;
to restrict, to the extent feasible with existing equipment, manual handling of all or most of a patients weight to emergency,
life-threatening, or exceptional circumstances; and to provide for refusal to perform patient handling tasks believed in good
faith to involve unacceptable risks of injury to a patient or nurse.
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