Project Description
BACKGROUND
In nursing bedridden patient, the health-care workers and home caregivers are required to constantly lift the patient’s back in order to prevent septicaemia and to mobilize the patient as to prevent bedsores, ulcers, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.
However, due to the current techniques of lifting patient and number of patients needed to be lifted every day, the health-care workers and home caregivers suffer from musculoskeletal injury and back pain. To avoid or lessen the problem, nurses have to learn the right techniques or manoeuvre to lift up bedridden patients. However, this can be a problem to the home caregivers which they are not trained properly and they are responsible to take care of their bedridden family member. The probability to have musculoskeletal injury is higher among them. Additionally, the well-trained nurses also have the potential to get musculoskeletal injury because they have to lift up many patients in a day, not just one or two. Due to the problems that have been identified, we came up with a vest-like device to lift patients named LIFTHOR. LIFTHOR comes with 3 buckles for the patient’s safety, 2 side straps to enable repositioning of the patient and a neck support.
After interviewing nurses about the problems that they face in their job scope, we had come to a conclusion that the main concern is their back pain due to lifting patients on a daily basis. LIFTHOR can be used in the hospital and at home by the health-care workers and home caregivers respectively. It can be used on patients who are paralyzed, semi-conscious, hypotonia or those who have difficulty to get up on their own. We have succeeded in creating LIFTHOR and are currently in the process of patenting it. For commercialization purposes, we have targeted health-care workers, home caregivers, KKM (Ministry of Health), retirement homes, private hospitals, district hospitals and mobile clinics as it is useful for them. The product has been checked and tested by a certified professional engineer and nurses. The feedback is recorded.
