To give a full and proper response there are various factors which would really need to be more fully defined. Review of professional and research literature and talking with colleagues (NMAHM®, and non-NMAHM® practitioners) indicates that for personnel who routinely handle people a 2-day input appears to be average in the UK, and for those who handle only inanimate objects the time input may be substantially less.
It is also important to keep perspective when considering a response to this question: if any form of intervention is planned where a change in practice is sought this question is valid, and is not just applicable to the NMAHM®
Within the UK, the degree of uptake of other Health & Safety legislation, development of safe systems of work etc continues to place the potential weakspot in the musculo-skeletal accident/ injury chain with those who handle,
and increasingly indeed upon those who move. On that basis the personal acts/knowledge/behaviour abilities/
movement capacity/manual handling skill of these personnel become the factors more important to deal with within any input, and yet anecdotally the issues which are directly related to practical handling abilities and skills appear to receive a smaller proportion of the input time than other aspects of input. There are various other points of concern with regard to educational processes that could be developed further.
If an aim of input is to enable people to be safer in their individual practice they primarily require support in finding out whether they are initially safe and to what degree, and have adequate knowledge and skill etc to be able to perform to the level sought within overall Health & Safety standards.
In the NMAHM® this requirement means allowing the person to establish firstly if his/her habitual practice needs to change, and also to establish what can be offered as a viable and valid alternative to begin progression towards developing safer systems. This process, or components of, would normally form part of any manual handling input. Once the “direction” of change has been established the next key issue is to map the “pathway” to be followed, and to decide how far along the journey the course resources will safely and properly support personnel. These points require many in-depth skills from the developer(s), presenter(s) and auditor(s) of course processes in terms of models of injury development/ prevention, neuromuscular responses, anatomy and physiology applied in movement, and development of movement-based solutions.
With regard to potential danger the NMAHM® is the only system that we have found over our years of practice that offers the most protection to learners at all levels from novice through to skilled, and at all stages of development. This is mostly due to the NMAHM® pattern itself, but all recognised/ validated NMAHM® input should include the introduction of the practical risk assessment process (the “safety valve”) inherent within the
Registered/ trade-marked
Approach.
|
