Manual Handling Training for Aged Care Workers in Queensland

Work health and safety in Queensland

Queensland adopted the model work health and safety laws with effect from 1 January 2012, and they are administered by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland. The specific duty to manage the risk of musculoskeletal disorders from hazardous manual tasks sits in the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011. Since 1 July 2018, Queensland duty holders have also been required to comply with approved codes of practice, or to follow another method that provides an equivalent or higher standard of work health and safety.

Queensland's aged care workforce is spread along a long coastline and far inland. Residential homes and home care are concentrated in the south-east, but services run north through Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns and west to Mount Isa. In regional and remote services a second worker for a two-person transfer is not always down the corridor, which makes planning the task and knowing when to stop especially important.

Aged care in Queensland

South-east Queensland includes some of the oldest communities in the country: ABS population estimates name Bribie Island and Cooloola, both coastal retirement areas, among the places with the oldest median age in Australia. Aged care in areas like these happens in residential homes and in clients' own houses, units and retirement villages, which were not necessarily designed with hoists and wheeled shower commodes in mind.

Climate and housing add their own risk factors. Heat and humidity make transfers harder work and can leave hands, skin and equipment slippery, and older Queenslander houses raised on stumps often have front stairs and narrow verandahs rather than a level entry. Wet-season rain turns driveways and car parks into slip hazards during car transfers and outings.

Beyond the south-east, home care and residential services cover very large areas. A home care worker in western or far north Queensland may drive long distances between clients and be the only worker in the house, so the judgement covered in Module 5, Safe Movement Principles, and Module 8, Reporting, Incidents and Ongoing Safety, matters as much as the transfer itself: if the plan says two people and only one is there, the transfer waits.

What Workplace Health and Safety Queensland publishes on hazardous manual tasks

Queensland has a code of practice written specifically about handling people. Workplace Health and Safety Queensland lists two codes for hazardous manual tasks: the Hazardous manual tasks Code of Practice 2021 and the Manual Tasks Involving the Handling of People Code of Practice 2001, a Queensland code preserved under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and varied in 2018. The people handling code breaks an activity such as showering a person into tasks and individual actions, asks which actions involve forceful exertion, awkward or static postures, or repetition and duration, and states that no worker should fully lift a person, other than a small infant, unaided.

For home and community care, WHSQ's health care and social assistance guidance includes a Guide to working safely in people's homes, a document titled When community workers come to your home, a factsheet on restricted use lifts in homes for people with limited mobility, and a set of checklists covering accessibility and safety of premises, manual tasks, equipment and hazardous substances, which it says should be completed in consultation with the workers involved.

What it means on shift in Queensland

• Queensland duty holders have had to follow approved codes of practice, or an equivalent or better method, since 1 July 2018.
• The Manual Tasks Involving the Handling of People Code of Practice 2001 says no worker should fully lift a person, other than a small infant, without help from mechanical aids, assistive devices or another worker.
• The people handling code is meant to be read together with the Hazardous manual tasks Code of Practice, not instead of it.
• WHSQ's community services checklists are meant to be completed with the workers involved, so your observations about a client's home belong in them.

Who is responsible for what

Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld), the business you work for, known as a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), must eliminate the risks of hazardous manual tasks so far as is reasonably practicable and minimise any risk it cannot eliminate. As a worker, you must take reasonable care for your own health and safety and that of others, follow reasonable instructions and cooperate with reasonable policies and procedures.

In practice the answer to a heavy or awkward transfer is rarely "lift more carefully". It is a change to the task, the environment, the equipment or the staffing. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, the national aged care regulator, oversees providers against the Aged Care Quality Standards, but WHS law is Workplace Health and Safety Queensland's job.

How the course fits with your employer's training

Eight self-paced online modules take about 45–60 minutes. The assessment has 20 multiple-choice questions, a 75% pass mark and unlimited attempts, and a retry only re-asks the questions you answered wrongly. The A$49 Certificate of Completion carries a unique number and a QR code that anyone can check at /verify.

It does not replace your employer's practical, equipment-specific training on the hoists, slings and care plans you will actually use. This is non-accredited workplace training. It is not Nationally Recognised Training and does not issue a Statement of Attainment.

Common questions

Covered in the course

• Module 5: Safe Movement Principles
• Module 8: Reporting, Incidents and Ongoing Safety

Related guides

• Western Australia
• South Australia
• Tasmania
• Australian Capital Territory