Aug. 25--Dan Kuehnel was swaddled in a large sling, hanging a foot or two above his wheelchair at St. Anthony's Medical Center.
He looked like a super-sized infant in the grip of a mechanical stork.
A nurse carefully rolled the ARJO Maxi Move that he was suspended from toward a hospital bed. Then, using a remote control, she lowered Kuehnel, 53, of Caseyville, gently onto his mattress.
"Me and Dan are pretty good-size men. It would be hard for them to pick us up and move us around," said his roommate Tom Wheelehon, 61, of Hillsboro. "It's well worth (the hospital's) investment."
Hospital staff would agree.
Lisa Holzem, workers compensation coordinator for St. Anthony's, reports that 54 staff members were injured while moving patients in 2006. The following year, hospital administrators spent $900,000 on 65 pieces of ARJO patient transporter equipment that they distributed throughout the medical center. Since then, injuries suffered while moving patients have dropped 75 percent. Last year, only 13 employees filed claims for such injuries.
The hospital purchased two types of ARJO equipment: The Maxi Move and the Sara Plus.
The Maxi Move is used in lieu of slider boards to move patients from hospital bed to gurney or wheelchair and back again. The Sara Plus helps a patient rise from a seated to standing position, then rolls them around. Both use remote controls to do the heavy lifting, both have scales on them to weigh patients and both come with different size slings that secure patients in position so they don't fall.
James Clark, a nurse's assistant, estimates he helps patients with serious mobility issues move in and out of bed a dozen or more times a day.
"These are great," Clark said. "It's safer for my back and (the patient's) whole body. Plus, they aren't being manhandled."
When the equipment arrived three years ago, Holzem said, more than 2,300 employees took four-hour training sessions to learn how to use it. About 150 of them took eight-hour courses so they can teach new co-workers how to operate it and act as troubleshooters when it's not working the way they want.
Clark points out that moving patients manually often requires up to four people.
"Now it takes one person, two if the patient is completely immobile," he said. "So it saves the hospital in labor."
It also helps patients maintain their dignity, said Holzem. "Instead of four people trying to move a patient, they have a more private experience."
Ashley Allen, a registered nurse, has used similar equipment but with handlebars for the patients to hold onto, rather than slings to encase them, and hydraulic hand cranks, for staff members to rotate in lieu of remote controls.
But they caused injuries and required a lot of strength because "you're going against the patient's weight," Allen said. "In school, they always tell you to take care of yourself and your back so you can take care of the patients. It's nice to have the equipment to help with this."
Wheelehon said he feels a lot safer cradled in the Maxi Move sling than he does being pushed, nudged and then balanced on a slider board. "You aren't holding on to anything (on the slider board) like with the Maxi Move."
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