Sweet Ride From Start to Finish

Kids like to drive electric cars to the OR. Older patients prefer the quiet ride of a motorized stretcher chair that transforms from seat to transport stretcher to OR table to recovery recliner as you wheel them from one station to the next.

A strange calm comes over our cataract patients when we tell them that they never have to move from their pre-operative chairs until after they've had their snack and sunglasses. When we show them to their recliner at check-in, they feel like first-class passengers on a 2-hour direct flight to IOL International with no connections or layovers.

Each of our 4 stretcher chairs here at SightTrust Eye Institute Surgery Center in Sunrise, Fla., is a self-contained unit. To the chair's IV poles we strap monitors and baskets that hold the patient's charts. When you can move patients from their pre-op bay to the OR to recovery without transfers and without hooking up and unhooking monitors over and over, you'll save time, reduce the risk of falls and protect your staff from lifting injuries.

It's a stretcher ... It's a table ... It's a recliner ... It's a stretcher chair!

Stretcher chairs are the Swiss Army knives of surgery. With the push of a button on a motorized model with remote-control operation, you can raise, lower and tilt the chair's back, legs and height, taking patients from supine to upright and every sitting and lying position in between, even Trendelenburg. Gone is the need for your surgeons to adjust table height, and for your staff to lift and transfer patients to a different surface. We've programmed our fleet of 4 chairs to the exact height needed, per station, throughout our 2-OR suite: positions for pre-op, transport, surgery and post-op. Staff simply push a button for programmed position 1, 2, 3 or 4, and then hang the remote on a hook on the chair's arm rest.

1. puts the chair into a semi Fowler's position to administer drops and let patients dilate in comfort.
2. puts patients into the physician-desired height for bladeless cataract treatments in OR 1.
3. positions patients for phaco in OR 2.
4. returns patients to semi Fowler's, the proper position for recovery and transfer to PACU.

Staff know which programmable button to hit as they're wheeling patients, and the surgeon knows that patients are right where he needs them to be when he arrives in the laser room.

From a logistical standpoint, stretcher chairs help maximize patient flow and throughput. They're easy to maneuver so you can wheel patients to the ideal locations to perform a task. The inherent limitations of traditional chairs can force you to, let's say, dilate patients in one area and have the surgeon mark patients in a different location.

In the 7-plus years that we've had our stretcher chairs, we've had no mechanical or service repair issues. We paid around $15,000 for each chair, but for a repetitive procedure like cataract surgery, not having to adjust the chair height dozens of times a day saves valuable turnover time, and streamlines the surgical process and patient flow.

To justify the cost, take into account that the stretcher chairs will replace a certain number of stretchers and recliners. You'll also save on nursing time, and experience fewer staff and patient injuries.