Currently, most hospital beds, specialized treatment beds, and patient transfer beds (hereinafter, “hospital beds”) are moved manually by people. Hospital beds are regularly moved while the patient still occupies the bed. This is because less physical effort is required to move the patient and bed together than to lift the patient off the bed, place the patient onto a gurney bed, move the patient and gurney bed to another room, and then lift the patient back into a bed. Due to the weight of the typical hospital bed, the force required to move the bed through long corridors, up or down ramps, or over carpet requires force that exceeds a safe workload. As a result, a significant number of injuries occur each year to people who move hospital beds. A typical hospital beds weighs between 400 and 2000 pounds, depending on the style of bed and the weight of the patient in the bed.
Under the current procedure for moving hospital beds, a person pushes on the edge of the bed mattress or on handles that are located on the headboard or footboard of the bed, all of which are above waist height (approximately four feet above ground level). This pushing requires the person to use the legs, hips, back, arms, and hands, any one of which is susceptible to injury from over exertion. These injuries cause lost work time and long-term health problems for people who move hospital beds, and they cause added expenses to the hospitals. And lastly, the people that must move the beds are often nurses, and moving hospital beds contributes to the already high rate of nurse workplace injuries and is typically not a task the nurses enjoy.
In an attempt to address the problems associated with moving hospital beds, Applicants developed the powered bed mover disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/280,157, which is entitled Hospital Bed Power-Assist and was filed Oct. 25, 2002. Said application is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety into the present application.
While the bed mover of the incorporated application is highly useful, there is a need in the art for a bed mover offering an improved configuration and improved operational features. There is also a need in the art for a method of moving a hospital bed that offers greater efficiency and ease of implementation.