September 17, 2003

Dear Colleague:

ANA is excited to announce "Handle with Care," a new initiative aimed at preventing potentially career-ending back, neck and musculoskeletal injuries in nurses. This new campaign, which launches this week, is designed to support the individual nurse in his or her workplace. The campaign seeks to mount a profession-wide effort to prevent back and other musculoskeletal injuries through greater education and training, and increased use of assistive equipment and patient-handling devices. The campaign also seeks to reshape nursing education, and federal and state ergonomics policy by highlighting the ways technology-oriented safe-patient handling benefits patients and the nursing workforce.

The Handle with Care campaign kit contains the following items:

• a news release titled "ANA Launches 'Handle with Care' Ergonomics Campaign";
• ANA's position statement on the issue titled, "The Elimination of Manual Patient Handling to Prevent Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders";
• a backgrounder describing the problem and efforts to address it;
• a fact sheet detailing how ergonomics hazards affect health care workers;
• a sample testimonial from a nurse who has experienced a musculoskeletal injury; and
• a tip sheet on how health care facilities can institute a safe patient handling and movement program and avoid musculoskeletal injuries to nurses.

Linda J. Stierle, MSN, RN, CNAA,BC
Chief Executive Officer

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