From the earliest basic stretchers to the ultra-modern, multi-function technical marvels we know today, the hospital bed has come a long way in a relatively short time. Some even say that billionaire recluse, Howard Hughes, was key in its development, although the actual impact of his work is hotly disputed.
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So let&#;s take a look at the history of the hospital bed, and how we&#;ve reached the modern standards that Redwood supply specialist medical mattresses for today.
Naturally, hospital beds have been around in one form or another for as long as people have been getting ill or suffering injuries in times of war. However, the hospital bed remained little more than a stretcher for centuries. This functional bed allowed patients to be moved around easily and provided some small level of comfort while they received treatment.
It wasn&#;t until the era of Florence Nightingale that hospital beds started to develop beyond the most basic provision.
The first recorded specialist medical development that we would recognise from today&#;s hospital beds, is the introduction of adjustable side rails in around . This was followed decades later by the first adjustable bed frames, which allowed patients to sit up in comfort for the first time. Andrew Wuest and Son patented an elevated frame in . This was followed by Willis Gatch&#;s three-segment bed in , which also allowed the patient&#;s feet to be elevated.
Change was slow in the early years, as the first world war and the influenza pandemic focussed medical services on simply keeping patients alive, or making them comfortable in their suffering. It was not until after the second world war that the medical world changed to focus more on the treatment of the living.
Legend has it that Howard Hughes was a pioneer in the design of the modern specialist medical hospital bed, following a serious plane crash in . The story goes that, unhappy with the specialist medical beds available, he demanded that his expert team design a better bed. While this may be true, it&#;s also fair to say that much of the technology was already being developed, and Hughes simply had the power and the money to bring it all together.
For example, General Electric had already patented a push button controlled hospital bed the previous year, and the fabulously titled inventor, Dr Marvel Beem, had patented a version with a built-in toilet and washbasin the same year. Nonetheless, without the pull of Howard Hughes, progress towards the specialist medical beds we know today may have been far slower and more fragmented.
Through the 50s and 60s, the electronic control of specialist medical beds became more and more sophisticated, with the basic remote controller we know today first introduced in .
From the s, with the basics of the bed frame refined, focus switched to the design of specialist medical mattresses. Memory foam mattresses and antibacterial fabrics were introduced in the s, and built-in sensors are becoming more sophisticated all the time. Today, the most high-tech specialist medical mattresses can measure pulse and respiratory rates without any wires connected to the patient, and can even alert staff when a patient unexpectedly leaves the bed.
Many fads and fashions have come and gone in the history of medicine. In the future, we will no doubt look at some of today&#;s treatments with the same disbelief that we look at leeches and bloodletting today. Yet the specialist medical bed will always be needed, and it will continue to be refined to give greater patient comfort, to offer more efficient and effective treatment for medical and to provide ever increasing protection from hospital acquired infections.
At Redwood, we&#;re proud to be playing our part in that development, with the very latest in specialist medical mattresses that provide greater comfort and the highest levels of infection control. We might not be backed by Howard Hughes, but we are constantly investing in better specialist medical products for the future of hospital beds.
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A hospital bed or hospital cot is a bed specially designed for hospitalized patients or others in need of some form of health care. These beds have special features both for the comfort and well-being of the patient and for the convenience of health care workers. Common features include adjustable height for the entire bed, the head, and the feet, adjustable side rails, and electronic buttons to operate both the bed and other nearby electronic devices.
Hospital beds and other similar types of beds such as nursing care beds are used not only in hospitals, but in other health care facilities and settings, such as nursing homes, assisted living facilities, outpatient clinics, and in home health care.
While the term hospital bed can refer to the actual bed, the term bed is also used to describe the amount of space in a health care facility, as the capacity for the number of patients at the facility is measured in available "beds".
There are various pros and cons for the different types of hospital beds, depending on the functions and features available, among other factors.[2]
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Beds with adjustable side rails first appeared in Britain some time between and .[3]
In the mattress company Andrew Wuest and Son, Cincinnati, Ohio, registered a patent for a type of mattress frame with a hinged head that could be elevated, a predecessor of the modern day hospital bed.[4]
The modern 3-segment adjustable hospital bed was invented by Willis Dew Gatch, chair of the Department of Surgery at the Indiana University School of Medicine, in the early 20th century. This type of bed is sometimes referred to as the Gatch Bed.[3]
The modern push-button hospital bed was invented in , and it originally included a built-in toilet in hopes of eliminating the bedpan.[5]
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Hospital beds at the Hospital Regional de Apatzingán in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico[
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Alternating pressure mattresses use computer-controlled pumps to inflate and deflate automatically in order to lower the risk of bed sores.[6]
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Many modern hospital beds are able to feature a bed exit alarm whereby a pressure pad on or in the mattress arms an audible alert when a weight such as a patient is placed on it, and activating the full alarm once this weight is removed. This is helpful to hospital staff or caregivers monitoring any number of patients from a distance (such as a nurse's station) as the alarm will trigger in the event of a patient (especially the elderly or memory impaired) falling out of the bed or wandering off unsupervised. This alarm can be emitted solely from the bed itself or connected to the nurse call bell/light or hospital /paging system.[7] Also some beds can feature a multi-zone bed exit alarm which can alert the staff when the patient start moving in the bed and before the actual exit which is necessary for some cases.
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In the event of the bed occupant suddenly requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation, some hospital beds offer a CPR function in the form of a button or lever which when activated flattens the bed platform and put it in lowest height and deflates and flattens the bed's air mattress (if installed) creating a flat hard surface necessary for CPR administration.[8]
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Beds can be raised and lowered at the head, feet, and their entire height. While on older beds this is done with cranks usually found at the foot of the bed, on modern beds this feature is electronic.
Today, while a fully electric bed has many features that are electronic, a semi-electric bed has two motors, one to raise the head, and the other to raise the foot.[9]
Raising the head (known as a Fowler's position) can provide some benefits to the patient, the staff, or both. The Fowler's position is used for sitting the patient upright for feeding or certain other activities, or in some patients, can ease breathing, or may be beneficial to the patient for other reasons.[9]
Raising the feet can help ease movement of the patient toward the headboard and may also be necessary for certain conditions.
Raising and lowering the height of the bed can help bring the bed to a comfortable level for the patient to get in and out of bed, or for caregivers to work with the patient.
There are 5 function beds which comes with many functions such as head elevation, foot elevation, Trendelenburg, reverse Trendelenburg positions with height adjustment options.[10] These type of beds are typically used in ICUs and for patients who are high dependent.
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Beds have side rails that can be raised or lowered. These rails, which serve as protection for the patient and sometimes can make the patient feel more secure, can also include the buttons used for their operation by staff and patients to move the bed, call the nurse, or even control the television.[11]
There are many types of side rails to serve different purposes. While some are simply to prevent patient falls, others have equipment that can aid the patient themself without physically confining the patient to bed.
Side rails, if not built properly, can be of risk for patient entrapment. In the United States, more than 300 deaths were reported as a result of this between and .[12] As a result, the Food and Drug Administration has set guidelines regarding the safety of side rails.[13]
In some cases, use of the rails may require a physician's order (depending on local laws and the policies of the facility where they are used) as rails may be considered a form of medical restraint.
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Many specialist hospital beds are also produced to effectively treat different injuries. These include standing beds, turning beds and legacy beds. These are usually used to treat back and spinal injuries as well as severe trauma.
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Some advanced beds are equipped with columns which help tilt the bed to 15&#;30 degrees on each side. Such tilting can help prevent pressure ulcers for the patient, and help caregivers to do their daily tasks with less of a risk of back injuries.[14]
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Wheels enable easy movement of the bed, either within parts of the facility in which they are located, or within the room. Sometimes movement of the bed a few inches to a few feet may be necessary in patient care.
Wheels are lockable. For safety, wheels can be locked when transferring the patient in or out of the bed.[15]
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A hospital bed can cost over US$.00; on average with different costs associated with completely manual functions, 2-motor functions and fully electric 3-motor functions (whole bed going up and down). Other costs are associated with bariatric heavy duty models that also offer extra width.[16]
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Hospital beds can make a patient's spine more rounded because a patient who sits up a lot, such as when watching television, tends to slip down.[17] Some of the category a bed manufacturers are providing their beds with a built-in function which acts as an anti-slip. LINET is providing Ergoframe while others have different names.[18]
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During the s, patient safety had been a concern with hospital beds.
In , a 3-year-old Milwaukee girl hospitalized for pneumonia was killed when crushed by a mechanical hospital bed.[19]
In , an 11-year-old Illinois boy was strangled to death by a hospital bed.[20]
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