350 Champions, 700 Lifts and a Safer Way to Move Patients at Duke

A growing network of trained caregivers is transforming how patient movement happens across units and clinics

Three people around a hospital bed.
Duke MOVES Program Coordinator Yeu-Li Yeung, left, and Clinical Nurse Educator Karen Albidrez, help Duke University Hospital Float Pool Education Supervisor Jessica Lopez learn about a device that can aid in the movement of patients. Photo by Stephen Schramm.

On a day last fall, caregivers from across Duke University Hospital walked into a campus meeting room for an up-close look at devices that can make their work safer and easier.

Organized by the Duke Health Occupational & Environmental Safety Office’s “Duke MOVES” program and the Center for Clinical Learning and Development, the daylong drop-in skills training event gave clinical staff hands-on experience with a range of patient lifts used at Duke.

In one corner of the room, nurses easily moved a heavy mannequin around a hospital bed with the help of a device that reduced friction and guided the movements by inflating and deflating. Nearby, a powered device gently raised a nurse posing as an immobile patient to a standing position while another machine resembling a miniature crane lifted volunteers wrapped in hefty fabric from a wheelchair.

Clinical Nurse Educator Karen Albidrez, left, and Duke MOVES Program Coordinators Yeu-Li Yeung, center, and Jennifer McIlvaine, right, help teach Duke healthcare staff how to move patients safely. Photo by Stephen Schramm.

“It’s awesome for people to be able to come by and get comfortable with these machines and then go back and help their teams be more comfortable using them, too,” said event participant Jon Hall, a Polysomnographic Technologist at the Duke Sleep Disorders Clinic. 

For the past decade, Duke MOVES – Move Often, Very Early and Safely – has equipped caregivers from across Duke University Health System with the skills and confidence to move patients safely, offering training in safe handling techniques and the use of mechanical lifts. The program has been led since its inception by OESO Duke MOVES Program Coordinators Yeu-Li Yeung and Jennifer McIlvaine.

Alongside drop-in sessions and unit safety audits, the program centers on a supported network of healthcare professionals – dubbed “Duke MOVES Champions” – who serve as in-house experts for safe patient mobility.

In its first 10 years, Duke MOVES has trained more than 350 champions from across 73 inpatient units and 98 clinics and procedural areas, supporting a health system that now uses nearly 700 lifts.

“It’s a unique program, I don’t think a lot of organizations have something like this that combines safe patient handling and falls prevention,” said Duke Health Assistant Vice President for Practice, Quality, Education and Magnet Margarita de la Fuente, Duke MOVES’ executive sponsor. “Duke really prioritizes the safety of our patients and the safety of our people.”

Duke MOVES Program Coordinator Jennifer McIlvaine speaks with Polysomnographic Technologist Jon Hall about using lifts to help move patients. Photo by Stephen Schramm.

The program’s roots date back nearly 25 years, when the first patient lifts arrived at Duke University Hospital. While the devices reduced injury risks for patients and staff, caregivers unfamiliar with them were often hesitant to use the lifts due to patient comfort or slowing workflow.

In 2004, the Duke Department of Nursing and the Ergonomics Division of OESO launched the Minimal Manual Lift Environment (MMLE) program, which trained Duke caregivers on safe patient handling practices and encouraged lift use.

The effort worked. As lifts became more common, Duke leaders saw a chance by 2014 to expand the MMLE’s scope to include broader fall-prevention strategies and ways to help patients begin moving earlier in recovery.

The expanded program, launched in 2015, now known as Duke MOVES, showed early positive trends. In its first year, employee injuries that required time away from duties dropped by 45%. That figure continued to drop for the next three years.

“I think we have the best jobs at Duke,” said McIlvaine, who oversees Duke MOVES initiatives at Duke Regional and Duke Raleigh hospitals. “We get to care for the caregivers. These folks are out there on the line every day, giving their all, and we get to help keep them safe.”

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