Author Archives: Jayanthi

Repositioning Care for Patient Safety

August 3, 2015

The single greatest risk factor for overexertion injuries in healthcare workers is the manual lifting, moving and repositioning of patients, residents or clients, i.e., manual patient handling.*

MAINTAIN PROPER PATIENT POSITIONING

The PRUventor TurnPRO™ Turning and Positioning Device helps maintain proper positioning of the patient while helping prevent sacral pressure ulcers. As a patient repositioning system, these products consisting of a sheet with handles that assists with positioning, a removable incontinence pad, and foam positioning wedges. Together, these products provide a complete approach to patient safety and positioning that reduces manual lifting and helps to provide a more secure approach to manual patient handling during healthcare assistance.

REDUCE THE RISK FOR OVEREXERTION INJURIES

“Rates of musculoskeletal injuries from overexertion in healthcare occupations are among the highest of all U.S. industries. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that in 2014, the rate of overexertion injuries averaged across all industries was 33 per 10,000 full time workers. By comparison, the overexertion injury rate for hospital workers was twice the average (68 per 10,000), the rate for nursing home workers was over three times the average (107 per 10,000), and the rate for ambulance workers was over five times the average (174 per 10,000).” *

*(Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/safepatient/default.html on December 26, 2018)

MAXIMIZE SAFE PATIENT HANDLING

The main categories of patient handling are considered to be patient repositioning (i.e. sitting up in bed) and patient transfer (i.e. bed to chair). These two categories involve the use of mechanical equipment and safety procedures to lift and move patients so that healthcare workers can avoid using manual exertions and thereby reduce their risk of injury. At the same time, patient handling ergonomics seeks to maximize the safety and comfort of patients during handling.

We believe that the PRUventor TURNpro™ Turning and Positioning Device offers a way to maximize safe patient handling to reduce the risk for overexertion injuries.

The Vulnerable Ankle

August 3, 2015

I probably speak for more than myself when I say Fall is my favorite season. In addition to cooler temperatures and the beautiful changing color of the leaves, Fall means FOOTBALL! From youth to high school and collegiate to pro, thousands of athletes take to the gridiron to participate in this great American past time. Unfortunately, with the coming of Fall and football, also come injuries.

There is perhaps no other sport that places a higher demand on the body as football. While head injuries and concussions may have recently received the most attention, injuries to the lower extremity remain the most common football injury. In my twenty years of sports medicine practice and coverage of numerous high school and youth football games, injuries to the knee and ankle have by far proven to be the most prevalent and, in many cases, the most challenging conditions to manage. In addition to lost playing time for the player, these injuries pose a challenge for the healthcare practitioner working to rehabilitate the injured player and safely return them to competition.

In considering lower extremity injuries, torn ACLs (Anterior Cruciate Ligaments) and cartilage/meniscus damage that affect the knee may receive more attention due to the fact that in most cases these injuries result in surgery. However, it is the ankle sprain that is a more common problem. A sprain is the over-stretching of a ligament. Ligaments are connective tissues that connect bone to bone and are critical towards providing stability to a joint. In the case of the ankle, the lateral aspect is the most vulnerable to sprain. That said, medial sprains (primarily involving the Deltoid ligament) and high ankle sprains (involving the Syndesmotic ligaments) can also occur.

As a sports medicine clinician, my goal is to implement all the tools I have to effectively and safely return the athlete to play. In the case of a football player with an ankle sprain, bracing is a vital part of treatment. While I have and continue to tape many ankles, a quality ankle brace that can be easily donned by the player is typically included in all of my return to sport plans for injured ankles. Particular attention needs to be paid to the Subtalar joint given it is the joint in which inversion (the most vulnerable position for ankle sprains) and eversion occurs. Therefore, an effective sports ankle brace needs to incorporate design features to provide stability to this aspect of the ankle.

So, enjoy Fall, football, and throw a few of these braces in your training bag!

Crushing the Competition

August 3, 2015

A team of students from the UT Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering have spent the last 2 semesters working with the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center, better known as The Body Farm, to build a bone fracturing device needed for research. Deroyal’s very own Manufacturing Engineer Technician Nick Poker and CAD Engineer Zack Ziegler were on the winning team from the UT Mechanical Engineering Senior Capstone Project Showcase.

The students built their winning device for this senior design course, which allows students to apply all their acquired knowledge, such as engineering skills and science comprehension, to solve an actual problem within the community. The final prototype was displayed at the Tickle College of Engineering’s Senior Design Showcase, before winning the 1st Place Best Mechanical Engineering Project Award.

Nick and Zack

THE BONECRUSHER

The “BoneCrusher”, which is 6 ft long and 6.5 ft tall, allows users to control the amount of force, impact duration, and location of impact on bones, all of which are needed for force trauma research.

“The device is an integral part to produce blunt force fractures,” Vidoli stated. “This project will be the first research in which complete human bodies will be impacted with blunt force to four areas of the body: skull, thorax, humerus, and tibia.”

The device was built so the output force is easily adjustable and the impact duration can be adjusted in increments of 0.1 seconds. The largest force the students recorded during their testing was 1,900 pounds.

“The device will be used to help document the survivability of blunt force fracture evidenced following a burning event, and will provide tools to successfully differentiate blunt force trauma from thermal trauma,” explained Research Associate Professor and Assistant Director of The Body Farm Giovanna Vidoli. “This will improve the scientific knowledge of the fracture pattern expected in bone with pre-existing trauma.”

THE FACULTY AND STUDENTS AT THE BODY FARM PLAN TO START USING THE DEVICE ON HUMAN BODIES IN THE FALL.

“Research into many different kinds and sources of trauma was performed in an attempt to find accurate force values,” fellow team member Daelyn Greene said. “Data from impact trauma performed in a lab setting, trauma data acquired from car crashes, and trauma data acquired from crime scenes were three of the major sources we used to get an accurate picture of the varying forces we needed to output with the Bone Crusher.”