Effect of Outsole Material and Wear on Traction Performance of Nurse's Footwear in Hospitals

Traumatic injuries due to unintentional slips and falls are prevalent in healthcare and nursing facilities. According to reports, around 26% of all the nonfatal slips, trips, and falls cases were observed in the nursing care facilities. Slipping generally occurs due to a sudden reduction in the friction at footwear-floor junction, presence of contaminants during walking, quality of flooring, etc. While several studies have conducted pilot tests to understand the slip risk of different types of footwear, specialized footwear worn by nurses have not been studied till date. In this work, 50 shoe designs worn by nurses were selected to test their traction performances. A biofidelic and portable slip testing device was employed to test the friction of footwear over common locations in a hospital i.e., ward corridor, ICU entry, and nurse station. Through rigorous tests, shoe replacement threshold of 6 months has been identified, which could significantly reduce these accidents. Softer shoes having shore hardness less than 53 A showed high traction over dry floorings (R2 = 0.86). Furthermore, a novel method to estimate the worn region size was employed. The worn-out region sizes of radius more than 5 mm showed drastic reduction in the footwear traction performance across slippery floorings. The novel findings from this study are anticipated to guide the hospital management and nurses in selecting appropriate footwear, determining replacement thresholds, and selecting safer floorings for different slipping scenarios to reduce fatal and non-fatal slipping cases related to hospital staff and nurses.