Record-Journal – Sunday, March 11, 2007
By Jeffery Kurz, Record-Journal staff
MERIDEN - If you’ve ever played air hockey, you already know how it works. But in this case, the cushion of air is enabling not speedy puck movement, but safer transfer of patients from gurney to bed.
A Hover Matt is like a vinyl pool float, but with 3,000 pinholes on one side. The mattress inflates from under the patient, and the pump continues to push air through the pinholes, creating an air cushion that allows a patient to almost float from one spot to another under a guiding hand.
The technique makes a patient feel like 10 percent of his or her weight, so the smallest medical personnel can easily move a patient weighing up to 1,000 pounds (and if you know a patient that heavy, please let me know).
MidState Medical Center has been using the mattresses and other devices that improve moving patients since October. MidState now is one of just two hospitals in New England to have implemented a system hospital wide, said Clara Riley, MidState’s director of education services. The other is Cape Cod Hospital, in Massachusetts.
MidState has 46 of the Hover Matt mattresses to use in all departments of the 126-bed hospital. Along with the magic carpet- like mattress, there’s another mattress device and two robotic machines that are controlled by remote. With such equipment, hospital nurses and other staff can move patients around, from chairs to bed or bed to standing, in a manner that is much safer, for both the patient and the employee.
“We’re all thrilled about it,” said Frank Nigro, of MidState’s transport team.
The hospital has invested about $235,000 in the equipment. Planning started about nine months before the implementation of the program in October, said Riley. “We studied the type of moves that staff would do with patients,” she said.
“By year’s end we want to go lift free,” said Nigro, which means no longer using the old fashioned non-assisted way.
To accomplish that, the hospital has set up representatives in each patient-care area to serve as coaches who also monitor the use of the new equipment.
“The equipment is just a small part of it,” Riley said. “The success of the program depends on people using it.”
As if the Hover Matt were not nifty enough, another mattress device, called Hover Jack, can lift a patient from the ground up. Designed to help patients who have fallen, particularly instances where moving them could cause further injury, the mattress inflates in four separate steps, ultimately bringing the patient to the height parallel to a gurney. Medical personnel are already expert at making beds under a patient and face no challenge doing the same with a mattress no larger than a bed sheet before it’s inflated.
One robot, called Maxi Move, can lift a patient up to 500 pounds from bed to chair. Another, named Sarita, is for patients who can’t get from sitting to standing without help
The difference in using such equipment is like “night and day,” said Nigro, one of 11 members of a transport team that serves the hospital around the clock.
“MidState is taking the extra step to purchase equipment for patient safety,” he said. “You can’t put a price tag on patient safety.”
Riley said there’s a national trend toward providing better ergonomics for patients and medical center employees.
“I get calls every week from hospitals all over New England that are looking to see what we bought and how we use it,” she said.