Musculoskeletal injuries caused by patient lifting and transfers are a concern to health care workers. The Safe Patient Handling Act calls for all health care organizations to move to mechanical assistance from previous manual methods of transfers. This research analyzed two different educational programs that addressed safe patient handling for nurses within a hospital environment. The educational programs are self-regulated learning (SRL) and the interactive workshop (IW). The participants were 168 nurses from one Midwestern US hospital. Each nurse was assigned to either the SRL or the IW educational program. This study used an evaluative research design based in the theoretical foundation of the health belief model (HBM). The methodology included a demographic instrument, an injury data collection instrument, pre- and post-intervention knowledge test, and semistructured interviews to collect quantitative data that measured and answered the research questions. The research questions evaluated the impact of the implementation of evidence-based safe patient handling instruction on the reduction of musculoskeletal injuries incident reports from nurses 6 months pre and post training and the relative effectiveness of two types of educational programs on gains in knowledge and willingness to implement safe patient handling techniques. Content analysis also investigated barriers to implementation. The results of paired sample t-tests demonstrated a reduction in injury reports with both educational methods. However there was no difference in incident reports between the SRL and IW techniques. This study will have positive implications for social change in that the results inform development of effective educational programs that help to reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal injury among nurses. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations maybe obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]