Nurses are often the unsung heroes of medicine. Their jobs involve spending hours on their feet taking care of patients at the most vulnerable periods in their lives. However, what many don't realize is the physical toll the job takes on nurses' bodies.
"The average nurse on an average day lifts 1,700 pounds, and for our hospital, it's our number one injury category for the last two years," says Patrick Glover, director of Eden Medical Center Occupational Services.
"After you've been doing this for a long time, then you start finding you're getting sore back, shoulders, neck, arms... you know, things like that," says Cathy Winters, a nurse at Eden Medical Center.
The monetary costs are staggering.
"One blown back can cost me $50,000," says Glover.
But the bigger cost is to nurses in terms of their careers.
"About 10-percent of all nurses in the United States leave the profession each year due to injuries," says Glover.
Of course, hospital patients need to be moved frequently. At Eden Medical Center, patients are moved out of beds and into chairs several times each day to improve their circulation and avoid bedsores. Nurses must also lift patients when repositioning them in their beds.
A strange looking device designed in Sweden may be the answer to avoiding injuries. It's called the Viking Total Lift and can pick up and move a patient weighing up to 660 pounds with just the touch of a finger. A smaller version can move up to 440 pounds.
"They are really made to be able move a patient anywhere. You can actually go out and take a patient out of a car and bring them into the hospital with this gear, or you can lift a patient completely off a bed and change the bedding and drop them back down," explains Glover. "What we have now is called a zero-lift program."
When patients are admitted to Eden Hospital, they are evaluated to see if they will need help getting in and out of bed during their stay. If so, their beds are prepared for the special lifting device.
"It doesn't matter whethery they're 150 pounds or 400 pounds, they all go through the same assessment," says Glover.
The Total Lift makes moving patients like Greg Doughty much easier than having four nurses lifting him.
"It actually gives us the ability to move patients quicker and more often," says Glover.
"The patients seem to like it a lot better. It seems to be easier on them, and the move is easier for them. It's not as traumatic," says Winters.
And if patients just need help standing, the company created Sabena or sit-stand to help patients move from a chair back to bed with ease, and without nurses lifting them.
"So, I think it's going to make it easier on all of us, the staff and the patients as well," says Winters.
In fact, Greg Doughty seemed to like both high tech machines.
"It was great, just great. It's fun. It worked, it worked," says Doughty.
The total cost for machines on every floor of two hospitals plus the training was $800,000, but Eden figures it will save that amount in the first two years of their zero-lift policy.
For more specifications on the lift devices as well as information on the local company marketing it, click here.
