Good afternoon. My name is Beth Piknick and I am a registered nurse and member of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. I am here today representing the American Nurses Association and the 2.6 million RNs in this country to voice our strong support for OSHA's Ergonomics Standard. I am also here today because while working as a nurse in an Intensive Care Unit, I suffered a career-ending back injury that was devastating, both personally and professionally. This injury was preventable. I am determined to make sure that what happened to me does not continue to happen to other health care workers. This standard is a step toward that goal.

Moving patients from their beds to chairs and vice versa, was one of many lifting maneuvers I performed throughout my career. I would twist, bend, pull and push. It was part of the job. I never had any back problems. But on February 17, 1992, while leaning over a patient to move him, I severely injured my back. I went to physicians, surgeons, and physical therapists – determined to get back to work, but I remained in pain. I was willing to go through whatever I had to, but my major goal was to get back to the job I loved - taking care of critically ill patients and their families.

But after surgery and major rehabilitation, that remains impossible. I can finally be pain-free, but I have to work to remain pain free. I cannot stand for long periods of time without support. I can only sit in certain chairs. I cannot lift or do any repetitive bending or twisting motions. Before my injury, I was an active person who enjoyed bicycling, competitive racquetball, waterskiing and yearly white water rafting trips with my family, all of which I can no longer do.

Due to this injury, I have been relegated to a light duty job, performing TB surveillance activities for Employee Health. This is not why I became a nurse – I became a nurse to care for patients. My identity has been based on being an ICU nurse. The inability to care for patients was devastating and triggered four and a half years of severe clinical depression. The costs of this treatment were not covered by Workers Compensation but mostly came out of my pocket. My family has had to cope with both my physical problems and my depression. The true costs to them can never be quantified. It was horrendous and eight years later, I am still adjusting.

One of the worst moments in this whole experience was when I learned that my injury could have been prevented. I, like most nurses, assumed that lifting was just part of the job. At the time of my injury, I did not know that there were lifting devices commercially available and that my hospital simply chose not to have them. My hospital is only recently started to trial lifting devices. The proposal to purchase them has been sitting on a vice-president's desk for 5 weeks waiting for approval.

Health care workers continue to face an increasingly hazardous work environment. While caring for others, we put our health, and often our lives at risk. This must not continue. With this standard, health care facilities will have to develop back-injury prevention programs that will involve front line health care workers. Engineering controls like lifting devices, must be the primary means of prevention. Single-person lifts without assistive staff or devices should be eliminated - which means hospitals will have to insure adequate staffing. By protecting workers from injury, health care facilities can also invest in retaining a cadre of experienced, healthy nurses, which is particularly important in this time of increasing nursing shortages.

If this standard had been in place in 1992, I would still be living an active life. I would still be able to stand and have a conversation with someone without pain. I would still be doing what I love, caring for my patients.

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