Scope of Practice

“Every year, thousands of nurses around the world face lower productivity, receive medical services, and early retirement due to low back pain

” (Rezaei, 2021). This is deeply concerning, particularly when considering that we have a profound and worsening nursing shortage nationwide. 

Nurses perform vital functions in the day-to-day functioning of the healthcare system as a whole; they administer medications, treat patients at the bedside, manage wound care, and serve as patient advocates. 

Their scope of practice, meaning the roles and responsibilities that they are licensed to perform, offers life-altering care to the patients that they serve. 

Functions that exist at the highest level of their scope of practice include such tasks as performing life-saving maneuvers such as CPR, managing and administering medications, taking care of infections and nutrition status and managing wound care, and monitoring vitals such as oxygen status or mentation. 

There are a myriad of other tasks that function at the lower end of their scope of practice. These tasks include things such as transferring patients and assisting with toileting. These are fundamentally important roles in the healthcare system, but they are tasks that are time consuming and often require more than one individual to perform. 

Ideally, nurses should function at the highest level of their license. “Optimizing nurses' enacted scope of practice would be a significant integrated strategy for improving organizational performance, patient care and nurses' satisfaction and well-being” (Déry, 2025). 

In other words, optimizing workload to actually fall within higher levels of scope of practice makes for a more efficient healthcare system overall. 

The patient transfer process is a space in healthcare where optimization is sorely lacking. 

The hazards of patient transfer are well documented. “... carrying patients and changing their posture requires a set of movements and postures that bend and twist hands and back, and repetitive movements cause a lot of compressive forces and shear on the spine” (Rezaei, 2021). The problem is so severe that it costs the healthcare system 20 billion dollars annually (reference). 

All this, even in a time when we have other solutions to improve the patient transfer process. And all the more perplexing when we consider that these work-related accidents are entirely preventable. 

“Consistent use of assistive devices associated with lower exposure, e.g. ceiling-lifts and intelligent beds, may be important in reducing the high prevalence of MSDs among healthcare workers. Hospitals aiming to improve the local work environment could therefore benefit from further implementing specific assistive devices.” (Vinstrup, 2020).

Get ahead of the curve. Stop letting your staff members get injured from a solvable problem. 

The solution is already here: 

Sign up for a demo-day here: Healthcare Facilities | ReviMo - Mobility

References: 

Déry J;Paquet M;Boyer L;Dubois S;Lavigne G;Lavoie-Tremblay M; “Optimizing Nurses’ Enacted Scope of Practice to Its Full Potential as an Integrated Strategy for the Continuous Improvement of Clinical Performance: A Multicentre Descriptive Analysis.” Journal of Nursing Management, U.S. National Library of Medicine, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34532901/. Accessed 1 June 2025. 

Rezaei, Bareza, et al. “Low Back Pain and Its Related Risk Factors in Health Care Providers at Hospitals: A Systematic Review.” Annals of Medicine and Surgery (2012), U.S. National Library of Medicine, 30 Sept. 2021, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8519806/. 

Vinstrup, Jonas, et al. “Physical Exposure during Patient Transfer and Risk of Back Injury & Low-Back Pain: Prospective Cohort Study.” BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 31 Oct. 2020, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7603727/.