APHM 2017: Winner Sg’s Transfer Wheelchair reduces back injury for healthcare workers
Patients can be moved without being lifted, with the transfer wheelchair, which is designed to facilitate lateral transfer and back injury for healthcare workers, according to Michael Pang, Managing Director of Singapore-based Winner Sg Pte Ltd, speaking at the APHM 2017 conference and exhibition recently.
The rear wheel of the chair is retracted, allowing an easier positioning of the transfer board and for increased stability during lateral transfer. Patients can be moved from the wheelchair to the chair, wheelchair to a bed, bed to a chair and vice versa, without being lifted.
Most people will tend to take the short way out when it comes to transferring the patient, he said, by lifting them from the wheelchair, to the chair, bed or toilet. “When you lift a patient, the chances of getting a back injury when doing so, is very high,” Pang says.
According to a study made by the Workplace Safety and Health in 10 Singapore healthcare institutions, employing two-fifths of the healthcare workforce in Singapore, it was found that 23.6% of 72 workplace injury cases at these institutions resulted from over-exertion while handling, lifting or carrying objects. As a result of the injuries, more than three days of work day leave was taken.
The world’s first transfer wheelchair not only prevents injury among caregivers, but it also provides patient comfort and improves the working environment for nurses, as well as caregivers.
Designed by Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore, to take care of caregivers, healthcare providers, therapists in the handling of patient transfer, where they have to move the patient from bed to chair, chair to the toilet and chair to car. Pang says that they currently use a Patient Hoist, if it can be afforded, to transfer the individual. With the Patient Hoist or Patient Lifter, one would need to do that with a harness, but with the wheelchair the healthcare provider would just need to glide the patient.
The transfer wheelchair allows the rear wheel to be retracted, creating a nice space for the transfer board to be used to transfer the patient.
The wheelchair is meant to serve the rehab market, where stroke patients are rehabilitated before they are sent home. If someone were to have a stroke, they will be in the hospital for about three to four months, and will be trained on how to use the chair. The wheelchair is not only ideal for stroke victims, but patients with paraplegics, elderly and those with obesity as well.
Michael Pang was approached by Nanyang Polytechnic to help commercialise the invention in 2014. He has been in the wheelchair business since 1974.
The transfer wheelchair was awarded the Best Invention and Innovation at AAMHP 6th Biennial Conference. According to Pang, the wheelchair has gone through all safety tests, and is registered with the US FDA, TGA of Australia and Health Sciences Authority Singapore.