My name is Diane Hindson and I'm part of the back-care advisory service for county Durham and
Darlington NHS foundation Trust. Slide sheets are low friction fabric to allow safe movement of patients.
The reason that we need to use slide sheets to move patients is to
reduce friction and shearing forces for the staff to prevent musculoskeletal
injury and for comfort of the patients as well. The repositioning tasks that are
performed our taking patient up the bed, to do a lateral transfer perhaps bed to
trolley or to turn the patient. In our trust we used to use flat slide sheets,
however for the slide sheet to be used well and safely you must have two layers.
There are many slide sheets available, there are flat slide sheets of different sizes.
There are tubular slide sheets of different sizes.
So a tube is continuous on one end so that it moves and remains double at all times.
Our Trust used to use flat slide sheets but in our experience staff used one side sheet and didn't double it or
use two. Therefore the risks to the staffs health, musculoskeletal health was greater.
To move a patient up, what staff did was put a slide sheet under the head the body
but the feet were exposed therefore the friction was greater to move that patient.
So what staff should of done is put a second sheet underneath the heels.
The other disadvantage of this is that the slide sheets are quite narrow as well.
So clasping the slide sheet they had to reach in a little bit,
compromising their posture and their musculoskeletal heath again.
I thought long and hard about their ideal solution and developed a product
called Versal. Which is bed size and essentially a hybrid of traditional side sheets.
The innovation Versal is in effect two flat side sheets, offset.
So the bottom is slightly shorter than the top at this end and at the head
end the top is slightly shorter.
The design facilitates all horizontal movements with one placement.
I made the first prototype myself to test in the
training room with the back care team and it worked well. I worried that it was
too simple but when we tried it out in our wards the feedback was excellent.
Staff felt the Versal reduced effort to reposition the patient whether they were
being transferred between bed and trolley or being repositioned in bed.
As a result staff felt less at risk of injury to themselves. This is so
important because musculoskeletal injuries are the main cause of sickness
absence in the NHS. The trust has supported me in developing the Versal as a
commercial product it now means that reduced effort for patient reposition in
bed helps staff to go home healthy.