My mother, who has vascular dementia, lives in a Care Home. At 90 years of age, she has coped very well but recently she had a fall, fractured her pelvis and hit her head. She hasn't been the same since and can no longer support herself on her legs. She seems even less able to communicate with the few words left in her vocabulary – although her non-verbal communication is still largely intact – and she is spending increasing amounts of time in her bed. We are all concerned about the ever present problem of bed sores, so she is 'got up' for short amounts of time to sit in one of the armchairs in the lounge with her feet up.
When on one of my daily visits last week, the carers were moving her from the lounge back to her bedroom, as she had been up for a few hours. The only way to do this was using a full body hoist.
Of course, I have seen the hoist being used with other residents and had turned away out of respect for their privacy, so I had never experienced it up-close-and-personal, so to speak. it is not dissimilar to the one in the picture.
For those who haven't seen one in use I will briefly describe it. It consists of two parts – the motorised stand on wheels that moves the hoist up and down and swivels from side to side; and a heavy-duty, nylon woven vertically ribbed sling that supports the person's upper back and head and has wide straps that are connected around each of the person's upper legs. The person being hoisted holds on to bars on either side of the hoist contraption.
Once they are secured, by clips, in the sling, it is attached to the hoist and the motor moves the sling up to lift them and then lowers them into a different location. I have excluded a picture of the sling because in the main, the marketing images for such devices feature young smiley blonde women looking neat and tidy and fully dressed – and un-phased by the experience. There are a few different designs of hoist, the sling at my mother's home is mostly pale cornflower blue and the hoist is pale turquoise and cream.
All well and good, you may think.
Here are a few of my casual observations of it:
1 The fabric that goes around the legs is a strong but stiff, scratchy nylon has no soft lining, so rubbing against the sensitive, delicate bare skin of a very elderly person is deeply unpleasant, especially on the inner thighs.
2 The awkward 'man-handling' required in order to slide the back/head support behind the person, particularly if they are sitting in an armchair makes for a rough, uncomfortable experience for them.
3 Because of the way my mother's home's hoist is designed, although the back and head of the person is well supported, their lower back and bottom are left drooping down, while their knees are pulled up and apart, with their lower legs hanging down so that the body is in a kind of suspended foetal position. This is a debilitating, as well as undignified position for anyone.
4 To be pulled up by the hoist with the motor whirring in this way was confusing and unnerving for a person with dementia such as my mother, even though the staff are always kindly and do their best to be thoughtful.
5 It looks like a piece of hospital equipment, because really, that's what it is.
Equipment to help the oldest in society is really disgracefully ugly and hostile and often uncomfortable. Even the innocent and ever-helpful Zimmer frame looks out of place in a person's living accommodation. When my mother could still walk with one of these, I decorated it for her in a pathetic effort to make it less 'unsympathetic', with ribbons and little furry RSPB bird toys which could be made to tweet, hanging from the cross bar. What the Zimmer frame design needs, is a complete overhaul.
As standard issue for elderly people, the Zimmer has about as much charm as the old National Health spectacles, which have disappeared thanks to the work of fashion accessory designers. Why shouldn't all equipment required for older people be treated in the same way? If only manufacturers and designers could be persuaded to turn their attention to products used by the oldest old in society, my age group might be able to get ourselves about in the future with ergonomically and visually pleasing, recognised designers' walking frames to go with our Ray-ban, Diesel or Dolce & Gabbana shades.
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