Only thing i'll add is injuries from bed transfers is a real thing. Its not some made up caption for an interesting video. Happens way more than you'd realize.
I hurt my back on nursing school because I had to help a old person to get up he had fallen of the bed I called for help pressed the alarm, waited and no one came I had enough of it and did it my self. She was a heavy person over 100kg, so yeah I hurt my back putting her in her wheelchair, and i was even blamed for not waiting for help, and expeled for not following the rules and hurting myself on purpose
That sounds like something that could be appealed.
I work as a support worker, and it’s true that there is lifting protocols and procedures. But it’s also true that we don’t usually fault people for making mistakes like that; usually it’s used as a learning moment and sometimes extra training is provided.
It was a few years ago, and I didn't make a mistake. They just didn't want me to cause trouble. Because I was going to report them. When you press an alarm, in seconds, someone needs to be in the room to assist, I waited 10 min, and no one showed up. They called me liar, and yeah, it was a big drama.
Yeah, and I really enjoyed working in the nursing home. Before I started nursing school, I also worked as a volunteer in nursing homes for 2 years, so I knew what I was doing. And I loved what I was doing. But now, with this back pain, even picking up my 1 year old hurts
So many folks in these fields fall victim to the same injuries. Since I started, I’ve heard the stories of one bad lift ending in permanent back damage. It’s no joke!
Have you tried some physiotherapy? Sometimes specialists know how to help you exercise and strengthen specific spots you’ve injured.
Yes, I did, I also did that thing i forgot the name in English that they put things on your back that feels like you are getting small shocks, also water therapy
Expulsion because the nursing student willfully put the patient in danger by attempting a single assist lift on a fallen patient. The correct way to get a patient back into bed or wheelchair after a fall is using a mechanical or inflatable lift. If those are unavailable a multiple person team lift is necessary. Trying to lift a fallen patient by yourself puts you and the patient at risk for further injury.
I’m well aware of why the policies and procedures are in place. The point I’m making is that when people make mistakes, we use them as teaching moments, not moments to punish. It’s pretty basic OHS.
They followed protocol up until they felt they were left to fend for themselves. Someone else let them down by not coming.
It happens a lot. When someone has fallen, the panic of an emergency sets in. But it’s why I’m mentioning training. It’s one of the things we teach regularly; it’s okay, they’ve already fallen, get them safe, and wait for help. For my work, we have to call 911 which can take over an hour to several hours to arrive. That amount of waiting is something that is taught; most people try to solve the problem they’re presented with.
So yes, they set out to fix the problem, and they did it wrong and that can make a situation worse. I acknowledge that. The key here is that they are still trying to help. So we teach them better, not punish.
It was most likely a 1st year student currently being told what and what they cannot do with patients. I know my first few clinicals i was told no hands on patients and that I would be instantly removed and expelled if I was found to.
Hospital administrators really don't care much what had things happen to people with no families. Old people who don't have the ability to sue, who cares...
My wife did something similar in a nursing home, however instead of firing her, they just kept making her violate doctors orders, tried to make a case that she hurt it outside of work, slow walked her workers comp, and just in general made it such a bad work environment that she eventually quit. I also think they were trying to form a case to fire her “for cause” eventually but she broke first.
On the bright side her mental heath improved night and day as soon as she was out of there, and they have been so short staffed they’ve called multiple times in the last couple of years trying to get her back.
I can pinpoint the moment my back problems started. I was transferring a one legged dementia patient from their chair to the bed for the hundredth time. Nobody ever had a problem with them. We would "hug" them and hook under their arms to lift them up and pivot. They were normally really chill and could bear weight on their good leg. For whatever reason on this day she decided to kick me in the nuts mid transfer with her only leg. All of her weight came crashing down on my spine as I did my best to not completely collapse.
So I get us to the ground in one piece and she's double hammer fisting my face as I let go and roll across the floor to safety. I remember laying there, staring at the ceiling, laughing at what my life had become. Still doesn't even crack my top 10 worst days as a nurse.
Me, I'm unable to work normal jobs anymore from nursing injuries. Short staffed and no other choice but to do my best or let patients suffer. I worked in some really bad places.
God isn't this the truth. I'm a caregiver for my overweight best friend and thank god he's recovering from paralysis but I'm only 120lbs so this machine would have been a godsend for me when he got out of the hospital.
I took care of my mom before she died of breast cancer and it was so painful for her to move and I know it hurt when I transferred her. She was so kind about it but something like this could have saved her agony.
Yep, which is why I don't give a fuck if a 300lb patient is covered in shit head-to-toe and I'm alone. I'm waiting for backup first before we turn them.
If your grandpa or grandma I'm walking has their knees buckle, I'm letting them fall. Not risking my back. Nope won't do it, and I'm not sorry.
I've seen too many nurses and aides go the extra mile for people who don't even care about them, only to fuck up their own backs.
I’m an EMT in a small rural Alaskan town. Our clinic is under staffed so we have to help with all the bed transfers when we take patients in. Often we have to stay and help in the ER too. These would be an amazing upgrade. Especially for bariatric patients.
If you think bed transfers are tough though, try loading people onto the air ambulance.
Holy shit nothing motivates me to stay fit more than trying to get a fat person out of their house except maybe stuffing them into a tiny airplane.
I hurt my back helping with a bed transfer of my father when he was in the hospital. My sister was smart to go into L&D. Half the patients are tiny, and the other half shrink while they're there.
It sounds terrible, but it is one of the reasons why I support "lift mechanisms" for overweight people. I am 230lbs and I would rather have a lift mechanism to put me in beds than some overworked CNAs. It has been proposed and experimented with for a long time.
Overweight people get very mad at the implication that a lift is needed to put them in/out of bed for routine tasks, but the ego has to take a backseat for someone else's health.
I’m a hospital transporter, and never in my entire healthcare career have we EVER picked up a patient like in the first video! Ever!
Hoyer lifts are definitely cumbersome and awkward. I worked with them a lot in nursing homes (which can’t afford to retrofit ceiling lifts because of nursing homes barely break even), and while they are better than nothing, they are still terrible.
We use glider sheets and a non-mechanized version of that board (it has a slipper plastic sheet that rotates around the board as we pull). We also have HoverMats in every unit, which make moving heavy patients ridiculously easy. Like, almost too easy, where if we’re not careful we’ll pull them all the way off the destination gurney.
I can attest to this. I had an operation a couple years ago and had a tube in my chest for a few days. Everything was fine and I wasn’t even in pain during or right after the operation. Then the nurse transfers me to the non ER room but attempted to do it without any help and just dragged me from one bed to the other.
There was a few inch height difference between the beds so I dropped onto the bed and I could feel all tube inside me shift and I went from totally fine and joking with the staff to curled up in some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.
The clearly young and inexperienced nurse didn’t even notice my oxygen tube fell out of my nose when I dropped. He asked me if I needed anything before he left but I was in too much pain to respond. He took that as an “all good” signal and left.
My actual nurse comes in to check on me a half hour later, immediately notices the pained look on my face and fixes the oxygen tube and I’m able to take a full breath for the first time since being dropped. I explained to her everything that happened up to that point and I’m not even mad because I see a look on her face like “I’m going to be murdering some motherfuckers when I’m done taking care of you”. She looks at my file, is like wtf they didn’t even give you for pain meds?? Called my surgeon and was clearly very annoyed at the state I was brought to her in.
Frankie at Kaiser in LA, you were the sweetest nurse I’ve ever had the pleasure of being taken care of by.
It was truly a weird decision on that guys part. He transferred me from the ER wing to the regular wing and very easily could have asked any one of the nurses at the station we passed on the way to my room. He was a big dude and looked young so I’m thinking he was maybe still in the mindset of not wanting to ask for help out of fear he would be bothering coworkers. Hopefully one of the nurses straightened him out after. I did tell the nurse and x ray tech that came in the next morning once I felt better what all had happened so hopefully that dude learned.
All that said, everyone else was wonderful. That one dude was inexperienced and caused unnecessary pain but everything before and after that went super well and at no point was I scared that things wouldn’t work out fine.
Something I found really interesting was how well the staff all treated me. I think everyone was burned out from Covid assholes yelling my HiPpPAAaA so when I came in super polite like “oh you need to X-ray my chest again? No problem, you need me to turn my torso or anything?” they basically treated me like royalty lol. I shit you not I could hear the relief in people’s voices when they realized I wasn’t an asshole. I straight up heard my nurse Frankie tell the nurse taking over after her shift on the way out “this one’s easy”. It made me feel happy to make the staffs jobs easier but also it’s sad as hell to me that me just being normal nice to people was such a stark contrast from the average person being absolute dickheads to hospital staff.
One of my first entry level healthcare jobs a few years ago (while I was in college because I wanted experience for professional grad school eventually), it was a care tech. at a hospital, and it was the worst to not just my mental health but also physical! I clearly remembering struggling (me a petite and short gal) to transfer a 250+ lb patient to another bed and move them, then even when I called another tech and nurse for help, we were still struggling! Even using techniques like elevating certain sides of bed or using the bedsheets, it was so physically straining. I added that to one of the reasons I didn't do that work for long.
So yeah, this would have been so helpful for not just patients, but also the staff.
It's not something I ever thought of before, not being in the medical field, but it makes perfect sense that bed transfers would be a common injury point
This is why I like reddit so much, you get to learn so much about stuff you'd never otherwise consider
Not a bed transfer, but I remember I was in the hospital for 3rd degree burns. On top of the burns, I also had a trecea tube in, and I was extremely weak from being in a medically induced coma. They had to roll me over to change something under me. And they rolled me right onto my arm, which was almost all 3rd degree. I tried to scream in pain, but no sound came out because of the ventilator tube.
They didn't realize until they had finished, and someone finally saw my face and put together was had happened. Thankfully, there was no additional damage to my arm, but I still remember that as the most pain I'd felt since I had g9tten hurt.
Yeah it helps to just picture it differently. If I asked you to reach across a table and lift a 90 lb barbell with just your arms, at full stretch, you'd say "fuck no, that will murder my back" but when it's a person that heavy it seems like it should be light.
Yes, my MIL had terrible back issues from being a nurse. This should be world-wide industry standard plus would probably help protect staff from being assaulted by patients.
Yeah, I used to work in a hospital, I saw way too many patients fall out of of bed and nurses have to uses a inflatable mattress type thing (but taller) to get them back into bed
A huge problem is laziness. We have tools to move Pts over, slider board, slider plastic sheets, but it's just quicker to give ourselves a hernia. The number of times where I could of taken 20 secs more versus just doing a sheet slide...
I recently had a round of stomach surgeries and the most traumatic part of the experience was having to transfer beds for the scans.
This would have been amazing!
Not to mention how more dignified this is, especially for those that can’t control their weight for one reason or another and are forced to be jangled around with a hoist
Donated a kidney one time, this is how I woke up from urgery. They were all done sniping and moving my abdominal muscles/other guts out of the way and back and I was being tossed in the recovery bed… it was a jolt of feelings coming awake as 3-4 people are trying to move my unconscious body. I don’t think I started working against them, but I was out of it and was getting hit with a lot of “shits wrong you’re in a lot of pain AGHH” instant feelings… I can only imagine this rig is actually an awesome answer for the need
No difference in life after recovery and it was about 15yrs ago. In the hospital for surgery for like 2 days, mostly just for observation. Really sore for about a week, 3 weeks later it was pretty over. hardly any restrictions, only one I remember was to stay away from one or the other, Tylenol or ibuprofen for 6 months. had blood tests at 6 months, 1yr and 2yrs. Then that’s it… fun extra, fair number of people only have 1 kidney and never know it. Its one the tests actually, CT scan. Although I think they’re also mapping how things are plumbed and whatever else. They told me it takes about a year and my remaining kidney would grow to handle the additional capacity of running alone. So basically stressed until it adapts to job… all in I’d recommend it or do it again if I could. Dialysis is a rough life, so a little inconvenience in my life to save someone from it is a cheap fix to me.
My mom donated a kidney to her brother. She and her other brother went through the tests to find the best match. Turns out her brother only had one kidney and had no idea! He was disappointed but we like to tease him about it now.
Appreciate it, but honestly why I don’t talk about it much. It was a small thing and I’d like to think most people would do it if they found themselves in a similar situation. I didn’t do much more than show up.
I have scanned thousands of fistulas, so I truly mean this…Thank you. Dialysis is life saving and I’m so thankful for it, but a kidney transplant makes a person’s life so much easier.
My sister in law just found out a year ago she only had one kidney and she is over 40. They just randomly found out when doing a ct scan for something else.
I know someone who was born with only one kidney and didn't find out under they were in their late 60s. Turns out you really only need one as long as you're not beating the shit out of it.
It's extremely jarring waking up as you are being moved around, I remember waking up after fainting and feeling extreme irritation at the nurses and doctors around me who where just helping me. Can't imagine with the addition of pain.
I don’t really remember it from the first one, but for my second my husband and baby walked out to go to recovery, and then we moved me to the rolling bed. I say we because they needed me to sort of roll/scoot my butt sideways as part of the process. Was extremely weird to do seconds after open abdominal surgery.
Had a hernia repair, I woke up just before they were to move me and I actually moved myself to the other bed. I was high on painkillers but awake. Probably was a stupid thing to do.
If you need or use a service, whether it's healthcare, retail, fast food, bin collections, toilet cleaning, teacher, customer service rep, whatever it is - someone's gotta do it and that person should be paid a living wage that gives them a good QoL. I cannot believe this is a controversial thing to say, and yet...
In the US, the median RN makes 86K, while the median retail worker makes about 39K. It's really valued at more than twice that of a customer service worker.
We have a similar tool in the US. It's a blow up mattress that looks like a pool float. They roll you back and forth to get you on it, then blow it up with a pump. Once inflated, one person can slide you to the other bed by themselves.
Not only in the west. I'm an ICU phisician down here and most of my nurse colleages are also my patients on a chronic pain management. The ones 50ish and beyond are all arthrotic.
You'll probably understand this more than me, but my grandpa recently spent 2 weeks in the cardiac ICU in a major NYC based hospital.
Even the general room (lower severity than ICU part) utterly sucked. Felt like it was a punishment simply having to stay in there.
I was shocked how archaic and shitty both the hospital and ICU facilities were. It really felt like third world country vibes (no offense to any) despite being a very expensive hospital in NYC of all places.
I was surprised how nurses had to manually move my grandpa around and that there was no mechanical device to do any heavy lifting/movements.
Thats sort of my ICU (in a third world country LOL!) but there is a huge variety of both good and bad hospitals around here, either private or public ones. The one I work has a crane and a device that is a simplified version of this device on the video. Lemme see if I can snap a photo that doesnt picture anyone:
Ah yes, the entirety of the west from Canada to France, and New-Zealand to Luxemburg, treating their nurses like they're expendable, as opposed to some mythical non-western country that would treat nurses better.
RN here, unless the transfer sheet is disposable, they can keep their bodily fluid conveyer belt. We have inflatable pads to put patients on that turn them into air hockey pucks. If they get soiled, we throw them away.
Ha! Bingo! We use Hover-Mats for obese patients, and single-patient- use glider sheets and transfer boards. Also, that thing looks like it would last 3 seconds in an actual functioning hospital. Imagine getting a drain caught in it, or a foley.
My grandma has severe scoliosis, she shrunk down like.. 10cm.
Her back looks like an S.
That is the result of 60 years on the job.
Luckily, she didn't just sat around doing nothing. She does a lot of sport activities to keep moving, because if she didn't, she'd probably be on a wheelchair.
Edit: Apparently, according to my mom who works at the hospital, we have these for about 10 years now (Portugal)
Humans and ketchup are both roughly 70% water, so if you look at the intersection of what we have in common, we're about half ketchup and ketchup is about half us
I don't know if this was a trick that was known for decades by a small group of people and inspired this device, or if one very creative person thought of this device (13 years ago) and people seeing that viral video then figured out that you could do the same trick in the low-tech way posted above with a paper towel.
Oh, man, I wish I had seen this last week, before I attempted to clean up our dog's throw-up on our nice living room rug (that had tied the room together, if you know what I mean).
So, they have similar things in US hospitals. 1) They usually have 1 or less per unit/floor, and you can never find it when you need it. 2) They take a lot of time to train staff on how to use, and a very long time to set up when you DO need it. 3) The weight limit is usually lower than how much my patients would weigh. 4) Usually if the patient can’t move, they’re also incontinent; imagine pee and poop all over this contraption, then needing to clean it (vs throwing a sheet in the laundry). 5) They never fucking work. This video is like a developer saying “look my app works” and showing you a video. Yeah of fucking course things look smooth in the video
But my favorite to transfer a patient is the Hovermatt which basically turns the patient into a hovercraft and you can pull a 300 pound person with one hand. Takes a minute to blow up though.
It is, but these days they're so common that they usually are under patients when they're initially transferred into a hospital bed. We even carry them and a sort of mobile version on the ambulance. They do need to be changed if the patient is incontinent however, but you're basically doing the same lifts when you clean the patient.
Yes you just roll the patient to one side, put it under folded in half, roll the patient to the other side, unfold it then inflate it. But the 300+ pound patients will probably break this thing from China.
Yeah patients complain way more about the roller board than the hovermat. The rollers are hard and generally don’t feel good as their back passes over it. I’ve seen way less complaints with the hover mat. Also that thing looks stiff as hell once they’re on it. There are a lot of people with lower back pain who do not tolerate the hard surfaces. Also old people can develop a sacral decub so damn fast on a hard surface.
Most hospitals already use what's essentially a manual version of this.
Only thing I am worried about is that I am not sure whether or not this will be able to pick up patients as easy as seen in this video in a lot of cases.
I'd definitely like some comments from people who have actually used this for some time
We have a motorized one like this in our cancer clinic that can be used for an emergency. Like a malfunction of the treatment couch for one of the rad therapy machines.
I have never seen them use it, though, as it is more hassle than it's worth.
We had basically the same system for transferring patients into their beds when exiting the operating room. Works like a charm and it even comes heated for added comfort.
We just had to slightly direct them onto the board a bit, but if you’re using it for patients that can mobilise themselves like seen in the video, it shouldn’t be a problem for the system to pick them up.
I've been in the hospital for a month in September due to a broken shinbone and all I can say is that this would have saved me a fuck ton of pain and unnecessary movements in the first two weeks at least when I was being moved every other day
Some hospitals use these. Others use as much staff as you can get at that point in time to help and a plastic board or slippery plastic to manhandle them over.
I was actually legit wondering what the weight capacity on something like this is because the average Chinese dude is definitely way lighter than your average American.
We poke fun at us Americans, but it's such a serious problem and it even contributed to excess deaths during the height of COVID 19. I wonder how Asian Americans compare to Asians still living in their native countries.
Right? My boyfriend and I have been working out a lot lately (and dieting) by American standards we're both on the lighter end of average but that means we're both overweight.
I'm certain some of the young people dropping from various health ailments are most certainly because on average over here we are not that healthy, but some people want to blame vaccines! It's bonkers.
All the bedding, the gown ties, the lines, people with long hair, etc. Still a hazard when doing manual transfers, but with the added risk of pinch/pull/strangle/rip INTO the rollers and you have to be able to shut it off quickly if anything slips whatsoever. Those are also risks with manual transfers but a loud "STOP!" will get everyone to stop moving. Best analogy I can come up with is a vacuum roller that you have to detangle. Commenter earlier was right about hover mats though.
Yeah the “patient” in the video is perfectly laying at the optimal position for it and likely knows how to shift his weight to get it to work perfectly for the video.
Yeah, we've had one of these at my site for like… twenty years. You still want somebody on the other side turning the patient slightly for when the board goes underneath. Especially frail old people, otherwise they just get a hard plastic board ramming into the side of their spine…
My hospital uses the non motorized version of this to transfer patients. It’s a board with a slipper plastic material around it that spins, just like in the video.
Also, that thing would break in 3.2 seconds in an actual hospital setting.
I worked in an Emergency room in 1970 and a salesman demonstrated one of those beds for us. They let us have it for about a week. The hospital didn't buy it.
I used to be in patient transport back when I was 20, and this would have been so useful. Was built like a proper twink back then so literally I couldn’t move patients easily between beds, always needed to help of nurses
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u/Otherwise-Mango2732 3d ago
Only thing i'll add is injuries from bed transfers is a real thing. Its not some made up caption for an interesting video. Happens way more than you'd realize.