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career-ending injuries.
Ms. Gallagher suggests you look at
emerging technologies designed for
improving the care of bariatric patients
in the OR. But it's not enough to bring
in new equipment and simply provide
staff training, she says, adding that
there has to be some sort of process in
place that lets caregivers develop confi-
dence in using equipment that accom-
modates obese bodies of various shapes
and sizes. For example, the transfer technol-
ogy your staff employs has to be used cor-
rectly — failing to center a patient on a lateral
transfer device puts them at risk of being
dropped, she says.
Excess weight can gather in the legs, back
or buttocks. "You have to match bariatric
equipment to the patient, rather than think-
ing one size fits all," says Ms. Gallagher.
"Just because you successfully cared for a
400-pound patient today, doesn't mean you
can use the same technology tomorrow,
because the patient's body configuration
could be totally different."
There's an economic component to improv-
ing patient safety and quality of the care your
staff provides to bariatric patients. The mis-
handling of obese patients might result in
staff injuries that increase your workers' comp
premiums or leave you short-staffed. Nurses
might also work in pain, putting patients at
further risk.
"We want to protect obese patients from
all harm, to move to a zero-preventable-
harm environment," she says. "To do that,
you need to consider not only the business
case for protecting patients and caregivers,
but also the humanistic perspective."
— Daniel Cook
Jason
Meehan
z GROWING SUPPORT Consider the needs
of obese patients when outfitting your ORs.
We opted to upgrade the depth of the table's padding to 5 inches to
better protect the skin of morbidly obese patients, who are at
increased risk of sustaining pressure injuries during surgery. An addi-
tional gel-top pad helps absorb patients' weight and adds to the pro-
