Lifting, Moving and Patient Packaging

1. Body Mechanics: The Injury You're Preventing Is Yours

Two of the seven named high-risk activities in EMS happen during the part of the call that feels like logistics, not medicine. They're dropping patients and ambulance crashes. So before you touch a device or a diagnosis, you protect your own body.

The power lift is the squat-lift position. Your back stays straight and locked, and you lift with your legs, not your spine. The power grip goes with it: palms up, hands well apart on the handle, every finger bent at the same angle for maximum contact.

The rest of the rules follow the same idea.

Keep the weight close to your body. The farther a load sits from your spine, the more torque your back absorbs.
Never twist under load. Move your feet instead.
Reach only a short distance in front of you, back locked — that includes log rolls.
Push rather than pull where you have the choice, and keep the load between your shoulders and your hips.
Carrying on stairs is the highest-risk carry there is. So where a stair chair fits the patient, it beats a stretcher every time.

Here's the paramedic-level part: the decision matters more than the posture. Call for extra personnel before the lift starts, not once you're already struggling. Name one leader. Speak the count out loud. Every crew member confirms they're ready before anyone lifts. That's crew resource management, and it applies to a stair chair the same way it applies to an intubation.