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Downstate ambulance made for the obese
Associated Press
June 4, 2004
EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- A private emergency medical service plans to begin using an ambulance designed specifically to carry people who weigh 350 pounds or more.
When Jerry Key of American Medical Response began his career more than 30 years ago, he rarely dealt with patients weighing more than 500 pounds, he said.
These days, it is not unusual for the company to transport two or three patients a month who weigh up to 800 pounds, said Key, AMR's vice president of operations.
Not only is it difficult, it can be dangerous to use a standard stretcher for severely obese patients, he said. Their weight can easily shift, causing the stretcher to tip over and injure patients or staff, he said.
Obese patients are often carried to the ambulance on a large tarp and loaded in without being secured inside the vehicle.
"Think of taking a person who is really large, putting them on a tarp and dragging them onto the floor of an ambulance and now driving down the road. How safe is that?" Key said. "There's no dignity in that at all."
Medical-equipment maker Stryker has developed a cot for severely obese patients and an ambulance equipped with a device that can load and unload patients, said Lee Turpen, clinical and educational services coordinator for American Medical's East Region, which covers 25 states.
The first custom ambulance, the Specialty Transport unit, is almost finished and would be used in American Medical's service area, which includes southwestern Indiana, southeastern Illinois and northwestern Kentucky.
Officials from Deaconess Hospital -- which helped finance the project -- and St. Mary's Medical Center agreed there was a need for the service.
"We are seeing quite a few more people of size than what we have seen in the past," said Jerrilee LaMar, manager of employee education and development at Deaconess. "It's a steadily increasing trend and we have been making accommodations for their special needs for quite some time."
Obesity in the United States is epidemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Indiana ranks ninth among all states for the highest percentage of overweight adults.
Nancy McCleary, executive director of education, LifeFlight helicopter and trauma at St. Mary's, said valuable life-saving time can be lost during transport.
She said it used to take 10 or more people to lift patients off the floor of an ambulance and onto a hospital stretcher.
Both hospitals have new equipment and modified rooms to help accommodate large patients.
They include larger surgical and exam tables, longer and stronger surgical instruments, scales that can weigh up to 800 pounds, bedside commodes, larger blood pressure cuffs and stainless steel bedpans.
St. Mary's also switched to a larger helicopter to transport patients who weigh 500 to 600 pounds, McCleary said.
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