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Novel Mechanical System Turns Bedridden Hospital Patients

It takes five or six people to turn an intubated patient in a hospital bed. For patients in an artificial coma, this procedure is performed at least twice a day in order to improve patients’ breathing and prevent bedsores. A mechanical system developed at EPFL’s Instant-Lab  halves the number of hospital staff needed to turn patients and makes the task less physically demanding. With the Instant-Lab system, the top and bottom sheets around the patient are bound together in four places using a kind of metal clamp. The metal clamps contain holes for attaching cables; cables are introduced into the holes on one side of the patient’s body and attached to a patient lift – the machine typically used in hospitals to transfer patients.

Topics:
Medical Motion Control

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 The idea was to simplify a task that’s laborious for hospital staff. That is, turning patients in bed, especially patients in a coma since that requires a whole team of caregivers. It’s a complicated process. So we developed a simple system that significantly reduces the number of staff required. We wanted to provide a system that’s very basic in terms of parts and costs, and that’s easy for caregivers to use. The system works with the existing bedsheet that’s under a patient. When the hospital staff arrive, they place a second, clean sheet over the patient, which is something they do anyway with the regular method. Then they place this rod between the two sheets and simply roll the sheets together, and lock the device. These parts are attached to a patient lift. When the patient lift is activated, the sheets are held together and one side of the patient is lifted. Then the patient can be easily rotated to a prone or supine position, or to an intermediate position, depending on what’s required.

    00:00:57 The system is really useful for three main reasons. First, it means just three staff members can turn a patient rather than the six that are usually needed. Second, turning patients requires a lot of physical effort because staff members have to rely on the strength of their arms. But with the patient lift, they no longer have to maneuver the full weight of a patient. They can focus more on the right turning technique. And third, it’s a very gentle method, and turns patients gradually. We hope it will also provide greater stability to patients during the turning procedure. We offered to test our system at the La Source Clinic simulated hospital because they have the availability as well as expertise with this kind of issue. The initial results were very encouraging.

    00:01:40 People were really excited, and some even called the system fantastic. The second step was to contact people who could potentially use it, like at emergency rooms. We tested it at HUG and they gave us positive feedback, too. Now they’re waiting for us to test the system on actual patients and manufacture it on a larger scale, since they would need many units.