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“Taking care of our employees and providing them with the safest working environment is just the right thing to do.”
Shepherd Center Implements a New Standard of Care for its Rehabilitation Patients by Using Hercules
“With Hercules we immediately saw tremendous benefits for both patients and caregivers solely attributable to this product.”
Background
The Shepherd Center, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is a 152-bed medical treatment facility specializing in research and patient rehabilitation that is consistently recognized as one of the top 10 rehabilitation hospitals in the United States. In October of 2019, Shepherd began using The Hercules Patient Repositioner as administration believed it positively impacted their mission to help people rebuild their lives with independence and dignity.
Matching the Mission
Dr. Anna Choo Elmers, M.D., J.D. echoed these thoughts when she said, “With Hercules we immediately saw tremendous benefits for both patients and caregivers solely attributable to this product. Our patients most likely have just gone through a life-changing traumatic debilitating injury and are very dependent on caregivers to perform even the basic tasks. Most patients cannot boost themselves up-in-bed, a task often occurring 6-8 times every day. Without Hercules, this task requires 2-4 caregivers and can take up to 20 minutes per boost. In fact, watching the manual boosting task is often alarming as you watch caregivers stand over the patient and drag the patient up-in-bed. It is clear and obvious that the patient is embarrassed, feels helpless and that their dignity has been taken away. Now, with Hercules, one caregiver walks into the room and boosts the patient up by simply pushing a button, taking less than 10 seconds.”
Patient Dignity
Kimberly Levenson, RN BSN CRRN WOCN remarks, “The patients don’t have to wait for help, their experience in the early days of rehabilitation is significantly improved as they feel much more independent and their dignity is maintained. This is the level of care we want every patient to experience at Shepherd as we continue to provide world-class care and rehabilitation services. Additionally, our patients who are very susceptible to hospital acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) have not experienced a single HAPI since we’ve been utilizing Hercules.”
Reducing Nursing Burnout
From the staff’s perspective, Hercules has made a vast improvement in their overall satisfaction levels. As CNO Tammy King, RN, MSN, ET, CRRN, CCM says, “This previously unsafe, inefficient and physically challenging task of ‘boosting’ a patient up-in-bed has been reduced to simply pushing a button. Clearly, this eliminates the potential for injury and reduces caregiver physical demands which helps reduce nursing burnout and allows our staff to be more efficient in their day-to-day activities. In fact, we estimate that each of our frontline bedside caregivers gains approximately one hour of time each day using Hercules when boosting patients. And, without a doubt there is a smile on their face when they use Hercules, which directly improves morale, caregiver satisfaction, and also helps prevent burnout and fatigue.”
A Solid Return for Patients and Caregivers
“The patients love Hercules. It allows them to be pulled up in such a way that is not painful nor traumatic and without having to wait for more than one staff member,” says Carolyn Loughner, RN BSN CRRN. “It is also the perfect mattress clinically for our patient population as many have decreased mobility and need the head of bed at 30 degrees for airway management and for tube feedings during boosting. Additionally, Hercules is a fantastic resource for preventing skin breakdown.” And when it came time to evaluate the economics of purchasing Hercules for the entire facility, Shepherd looked at the total “hard” dollar savings (eliminating boosting injuries, reducing specialty bed rentals and reducing hospital acquired pressure injuries), and the payback was under a year. Adding the reduction in caregiver time spent boosting and reduced turnover cut the payback period to under 7 months. In the end, Carolyn summed up Shepherd’s Hercules experience with, “The staff love it because they don’t need help boosting and it saves their back from injury. I’m so glad we have it here!”