I have often seen posts asking for details of recommended organisations to deliver manual handling training. I wonder whether safety professionals use this as a standard approach, whether they generally conduct their own in-house training or whether they use an internal Train the Trainer resource? Due to the sometimes complex ergonomic factors involved in different types of lifting and carrying operations I am slightly reluctant to do it myself for fear of advising wrongly. Any help and advice would be very much appreciated.

We have a number of small Healthcare premises, dealing with people with complex conditions and people at the end of life. This leads to complex MH risk assessments; in our Care Centres we use one of the bigger national providers to train the trainers, we only advise even though one of our team has a PgDip in Back Care and another one has been part of the National Back Exchange. In our Charity shops though it's quite straightforward; we do it ourselves, in fact, we train managers to do it. Horses for courses, look at teh complexity, and also the consequences if it all goes pear-shaped. In our Care Centres getting it wrong has a reasonable chance of killing somebody, John

Hi DEJ We went down the route of becoming trainers ourselves, using the IOSH course. Then we merged with another company doubling our size and I designed an in house train the trainer course and the last few years have trained many in-house trainers. I belive this is not only a cheaper, but a more fexible option and the training then fits into the learning culture of our company, which makes it easier for employees to learn. To ensure all the training was delivered the same and to the required standard I designed a course and a training resource pack for the in-house trainers. For more in depth and difficult manual handling situations, we looked at improving our in-house skills further - IOSH Ergonomics in Practice, IOSH Managing MSDs and HSL/Ergonomics Society(IEHF) Introduction to Ergonomics. If you are still worried about giving the wrong advise, then I would recommend getting on the shop floor with the people who do the handling and have a look. Obviously, remember that avoiding and using equipment must be the first options for controling the risk. Let me know if you want any further details. Ian

I deal with everyday training for manual handling of goods etc, including lifting from akward places. When it comes to people handling for the health care unit we bring in a trainer as for me this is a totally different handling task.