Non-ambulatory patients or bodies that must be supported and moved in a facility such as a hospital, nursing home, morgue, funeral home, emergency scene, remote rescue location, or the like, etc. present substantial challenges when a the patient or body must be moved from one location to another. A patient, for example, may need to be moved from a hospital bed, which must remain in the patient's room, to a stretcher and then from the stretcher to a treatment location such as a surgical table in an operating room. Following treatment the reverse patient handling sequence must occur; i.e., the patient must be moved from the surgical table, which remains in the operating room, to a stretcher which travels to the patient's hospital room, and then from the stretcher back onto the bed in the hospital room. Likewise, the body of a patient that has expired may need to be moved from an operating table to a stretcher for transport to the morgue. Then from the stretcher to the examination table.
In a very large percentage of such occurrences the patient or body must be handled in a fashion which requires only a minimum of movement with respect to a supporting surface. In the case of a patient being returned to a hospital room following surgery, for example, the patient's body may not be able to withstand the stresses and strains of being lifted from a stretcher to the bed when one or even several hospital personnel combine their efforts to make such a transfer. Alternatively, the patient may require minimal contact with the supporting surface in order to provide a therapeutic effect, such as with burn patients.
The same challenge of moving a patient or body with minimum handling exists in non-surgical settings as well. The bariatric patient is a prime and very common example. When such a patient is morbidly obese, transferring presents difficulties for both the patient or body and the care facility staff. While no exact definition of morbid obesity is universally recognized, many hospitals and other treatment facilities consider a person who weighs about 350 pounds or more to fall within that definition.
Movement of a morbidly obese person often requires the hospital staff to physically lift and/or slide the patient from an at rest position on a hospital bed to an at rest position on a stretcher a total of four times to complete a single treatment cycle, such as surgery. The staff must perform the task of lifting and/or sliding such a patient because in nearly all instances the patient, due to the physical condition of obesity and/or illness, simply cannot personally do the task. The manipulation of such a person requires a plurality of hospital staff since such manipulation is impossible to perform by a single person such as a floor nurse assigned to the patient's room. As a consequence, such transfers must be planned in advance for a specific time and a number of hospital staff must be notified and arrange their schedules so that all staff will be available at the same time. As is well known, many hospital staff are females and many of these persons are rather slight of stature. As a result, a half dozen or more such persons may need to be assembled. Instances have been known in which a morbidly obese patient has required twelve persons to effect the transfer. Gathering together such a large number of people four times at often uncertain intervals to provide but a single cycle of treatment raises obvious logistical problems and, in addition, erodes the quality of care the facility can render by reason of the application of such a large number of personnel to deal with but a single patient treatment episode.
The same challenges and drawbacks remain with respect to the storage and transport of the remains of a deceased body to be able to move the body as described above and provide dignity to the remains as the body is moved throughout the hospital, nursing home, funeral home, or the like, etc. Additionally, the collection of waste and drainage from the body is not accounted for in conventional apparatus.
Even further drawbacks have been discovered when special circumstances require heightened comfort for the patient and minimized skin compromise. For example, in those circumstances where patients with skin conditions require frequent turning or movement to avoid the formation of sores or the like, staff interaction is increased and the disadvantages mentioned herein are amplified, in addition to the need to move such a patient.
A further drawback to such a patient handling system as above described is that, even with the best intentioned and caring of staff, the patient very often suffers substantial discomfort. The simple act of sliding a patient over a flat surface can be very painful to a patient who has had surgical incisions which are far from healed, for example.
An attempt has been made to overcome the above described problems by the use of an air mattress onto which the patient is placed while in his bed and which is then placed onto a wheeler. A problem common to all such devices is that invariably the air mattress has the general characteristic of a balloon, in the sense that when one area is indented another remote area will bulge, thus creating an unstable condition. If for example a stretcher carrying an obese person makes a sharp turn during a trip to or from a treatment location, such an obese person will tend to roll toward the outside of the turn due to the instability of such a conventional mattress. The more the patient rolls, the more the mattress portion toward which the rolling movement occurs will depress, and the greater will be the expansion of the mattress on the other side of the patient. In effect, the conventional mattress reinforces the undesirable rolling movement and is unstable. Since much of the time the patient is incapable of stopping the rolling action by himself, the patient may roll off the stretcher onto the floor with disastrous consequences. Indeed, even in the instance of a patient who is capable of moving himself to some degree about his longitudinal body axis the same disastrous result may occur because the displacement of air from one edge portion of the mattress to the opposite edge portion creates in effect a tipping cradle. Only if the patient lies perfectly flat and perfectly still on the stretcher, and no roadway depressions or blocking objects, such as excess hospital beds stored in a hallway, are encountered can the probabilities of an accident be lessened.
Another problem with prior art methods of moving patients using an air cushion is the complexity of the procedure. The air mattress must first be positioned under the patient. Then an air pump must be transported to the bed area and connected to the mattress. The mattress is then inflated and the patient moved. The same process is repeated each time the patient needs to be transferred from one bed/stretcher/table to another.
A still further problem with prior art apparatus is control of contamination. Often, a tedious cleaning protocol follows after such use to avoid cross-contamination. Cleaning is particularly difficult because contaminant particles can penetrate into the mat material, and when the mat is inflated, the pressure can force the particles out and into the air. The high cost of prior art air cushions requires their re-use.
A yet further problem with prior art apparatus is the lack of dignity afforded the remains of a deceased body. The body is usually transferred to a stretcher then draped in a sheet or must be lifted into a conventional body bag. Up arrival at the morgue and/or funeral home the body must be removed for cleaning. All the while being transferred from one surface to another by lifting. Still yet a further problem with prior art apparatus is the amount of skin or body contact area that requires frequent movement of the patient, not only lateral transfer as explained above, but rotation or change of position to avoid compromising the skin during the healing process. Moreover, another disadvantage of the prior art is the inability to use such inflatable mattress in an uninflated state.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a body transport apparatus that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art and provides the advantages as described in this disclosure.