Hello All,
We have had this trouble within the ambulance service whom I work for, a new manual handling package was designed to reduce the risk of injury to our paramedics. This also included the introduction of new lifting equipment. We found that the traditional stair chairs were fine for carrying people down stairs, but not for lifting up again. Even the new stryker rugged stairchair are brilliant for carrying patients down but not up stairs. Our new policy is for any patient that requires lifting back up stairs again requires 2 crews to be dispatched...depending on weight of patient of course, this has reduced the back injury rate for lifting patients up stairs significantly.
Hope this helps.