Hello Charlie

Do you clean/disenfect your Pressure mattresses or do you send them away?

And are you brave enough to tell us which Trust you work for?

Lee

Hello Mike

Same question do you clean/disenfect your Pressure mattresses or do you send them away?

Lee

Lee - awkward one to answer. The 'party line' is that all mattresses are cleaned on the Wards prior to coming back to the Library. However there have been recent instances where the ELA's have had to clean mattresses in EME here. (approx 6 in the last year).

Hire mattresses can go back to the Supplier for deep cleaning - up to 4 per year. However, we have a mixture of hospital owned, hire and lease pressure mattresses.

Wards that have mattresses on 'long stay' have their own cleaning facilities where the top covers are washed in a machine at the discretion of the Ward Sister. We don't get involved in this.

The whole scenario is up for discussion at the moment and there is a project going on to standardise and expand. Finance is the holdback factor at the moment unfortunately.

Lee

Top sheets in washing machine, bottom sheets and between cells all done by hand. Particularly badly contaminated by "nasty bugs" sent away at most half a dozen per year.

Which trust? Well we are not a foundation trust as after going down that route with the associated costs and flannel for 16 months the board itself pulled out as "time was not right". Latest edict from on high in June "A new application will be submitted in the Autumn" Now mid November and a stony silence.

Hopefully not too far off-topic (I trust).

Can someone offer a clue as to why there are so many of these "alternating pressure mattress" type beds in service these days? It didn't used to be the case.

What has changed? Nursing practices? Patient "management"? Some previously unknown affliction amongst the population at large?

OK, pressure sores, and all the rest. But they have always been there. Could it be down to obesity now, I wonder.

The tech support of hospital beds in general has become "big business", and (it seems to me that) many hospitals have yet to catch up, as it were. It appears to be becoming (or, has become) a sub-discipline (speciality) of biomed in its own right. And yet it seems to be the case that the whole issue of beds per se is seen as, shall we say, a bit of a burden in many biomed sheds. Perhaps I should also lump in the whole business of patient hoists, LOLER and all the rest, here as well.

I am prompted to mention all this as I was approached only recently for some advice in setting up a private venture keen to "address" this "market". I may have dampened the guy's spirits somewhat when I reminded him of the difficulties of servicing beds with patients still in residence!

It sounded like he was hoping to carry out a "quick PM and safety check" whilst the old dear was out on a mission to the toilet! OK for a "one-off" perhaps ... but what about all the other beds in the ward (hospital)? Was he planning to camp out in the corridor, standing by ready to rush in with his checklist, toolkit, and Rigel* each time he (or more accurately, a bed-bound patient) "got the call"?

* Other electrical safety testers are available.

Yet again and at the risk of upsetting Andy AKA Kawasaki it is to do with money.

Patients developing bed sores have much longer stays in hospital (we haven't got enough beds as it is) and cost the NHS an extra £11K to £40K each patient I am told. I have seen the figure £2.1 billion quoted as a cost to the NHS.

Lee

OK, that I can understand (and thanks for responding).

Productivity. Throughput.

So now the (rhetorical, perhaps) question arises ... do we see a proportionate amount of the money "saved" being ploughed back into resources for tech support?

No

OK. Next topic, please ...

Which was until you "nicked the thread" How big is your Library?

Lee