Moving in the ICU

Reported October 2008

BALTIMORE, MD. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- An intensive care unit (ICU) is home to critically ill patients who often spend day and night in bed hooked up to life support machines and monitors -- but not anymore. Now, a new device is getting patients out of bed faster than ever.

Gary English is lucky to be up and moving. It was just a few months ago that he came close to death.

"I went into … kidney failure, and that immediately rushed me to the ICU," English told Ivanhoe.

English spent three long months stuck in bed, in the ICU.

"I just wanted to get out of bed really bad," English said.

He did get up and move around, but walking critically ill patients, like English, on life support is a huge task for staff.

"Under the traditional approach to mobilizing a patient on life support from the ICU, it required four people to be involved," Dale Needham, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told Ivanhoe. "That’s very labor intensive and difficult to achieve in a busy ICU."

Now, critical care doctors are demonstrating a new mover aide that uses half the staff of traditional walkers.

"We needed to make some changes in our equipment in order to make it easier and safer and better for patients, and that’s what had us create this mover aide," Dr. Needham said.

Behind the patient, a built-in tough, nylon seat replaces a wheelchair. It’s designed to catch a patient if they suddenly collapse. Life support equipment is attached to a tower on wheels. This new system needs only two hospital staff members to operate.

English said he believes this new device would have gotten him out of bed -- and out of the hospital -- sooner.

The original ICU mover aide was designed and built by Johns Hopkins University biomedical engineering students as part of a design course.

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Eric Vohr
Media Relations and Public Affairs
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Baltimore, MD 21231
(410) 955-8665
evohr1@jhmi.edu

Lois Smith
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(310) 394-1811
http://www.hfes.org
lois@hfes.org

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