Hospice Care is…

Hospice Care Week comes but once a year, and it isn’t recognised wholeheartedly enough. Although we’re about a week late to the party, we wanted to give our two cents on hospice care. This year, Hospice UK has launched the campaign ‘Hospice care is…’, which aims to make people think about the various aspects of hospices for patients, families, and professionals.

We at Innova work alongside hospices on a regular basis — in fact they’re some of our favourite clients to work with, purely for their workforce and tireless ethic when it comes to improving the quality of people’s lives. We love hospice workers because they’ve gone into their profession because they truly care about people as individuals, not patients.

So for us, hospice care is selfless.

This is something that we constantly bear in mind when developing products; we’re not just making them for the end user, we’re making them to simplify the endless jobs of the caregiver as well. Particularly when it comes to moving and handling patients, hospice staff sometimes are put under tremendous physical stress. The last thing you want in a hospice are your workers riddled with back strains and pains!

So we create equipment like the Arene Rise Recline Chairs, that are the only rise and recline chairs in the world designed specifically for hospices (as far as we’re aware). These are excellent because they provide stability and comfort, as well as the rising feature to aid caregivers. From our experiences, carers suffer mostly with back aches and pains usually caused by trying to lift patients from chairs and such. Having to crane over individuals and sometimes trying to manoeuvre some serious weight is a real health and safety issue in the hospice world. The Arene eradicates the need for such physical demands, and does the job for you at the simple touch of a button. The chairs are tailor-made to suit most hospices and users’ needs — making the job of the caregiver a little easier and more patient-oriented.

We put a few of these in a refurbishment of St Leonard’s Hospice in York, and they’ve since told us what an asset they are not only to the patients, but the workers as well.

Our Integralift is also ideal for helping carers to focus their efforts on the individual. The hidden hoist systems are compact, subtle, and easy to use, allowing the carer to focus more on the patient and less on the machinery. We make it this way so that hospice workers can use the equipment without any hassle, and so energy saved by simple design can then be dedicated to patient care. The Integralift works wonderfully when fitted behind the head of the bed, and unfolds effortlessly for the carer to use its excellent functions, alongside caring for the individual.

Our Integralifts can be found at St Teresa’s Hospice in Darlington; you can see here how they fit as a subtle cupboard structure behind the bed.

However, considering that the number of people over the age of 85 is expected to rise in the next 20 years, hospices need to make investments and find a way to accommodate the increasing demands they are set to face. Bed sores and ulcers are a big enough problem as it is, so the increasing demographic of those who will require hospice care will only put more strain on nurses and caregivers. By investing in things like our Somlent pressure relief mattresses, hospices are paving the way for the future. The Somlent range offer a variety of benefits — one of which being excellent air flow technology that will ease and relieve pressure points that often become pesky for bed-ridden patients. This in turn will reduce the workload on hospice workers, so that they can focus on the patient’s personality instead of their dressings. We kitted out St Andrew’s Hospice with some Somlents and they said our equipment was incredibly “helpful” in optimising the workplace for caregivers.

It also takes a huge job that hospice workers face and minimises it so that the prominence of bed sores is a much lesser issue with the help of Somlent mattresses. These quiet, soft, vibration-free mattresses make the patient as comfortable as possible, meaning that hard-working, selfless carers can focus on providing them with the finest end of life care.

Hospices are full of caring people. Their workers want to make a difference, and they work hard day-in day-out to provide the best quality care they can for individuals and their families who are facing some incredibly tough times. But who takes care of the carers? We do. Hospice Care is selfless, and we want to make sure that the people who are working in them are given the finest equipment to work with. We want hospices to invest in their workers and ensure that their jobs can be based on the care of the patient, not trying to fix the ragged old hoist, or straining themselves trying to get a patient out of a chair. We certainly don’t want them to be re-dressing bed sores and ulcers for hours and hours on end! So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you to all hospice staff for being selfless and making our days brighter and looking after our poorly relatives. We hope to give you a helping hand in the near future.