Include evacuation devices in your emergency drills

Hi everyone, it’s Scott Wallask over the Hospital Safety Center.

I read a story earlier this month in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about a company with a new type of patient evacuation device called the Med Sled. The manufacturers noted in the story that using the sled-like device, a nurse weighing 100 pounds could take a 200-pount patient down flights of stairs during an evacuation.

I don’t know much about this product beyond what was in the newspaper article and what I’ve read on the company’s Web site, and customers seem satisfied based on online testimonials. But I will say that George Mills, senior engineer at The Joint Commission, is concerned in general about evacuation plans and how realistic they are when it comes to physically moving patients.

I remember at a session Mills spoke at during the National Fire Protection Association’s annual conference in June, he asked attendees if they’ve ever tried performing two-person evacuations of patients for any length of time.

"It’s a lot of work," he said, and specifically mentioned the difficulty of a nurse trying to move a 250–300-pound person.

I’ve never evacuated anyone during an emergency, but years ago HCPro filmed a nursing home evacuation video that I was an extra in. During one shot, three of us had to carry an actor portraying a patient down a flight of stairs, and I was sweating after the third or fourth take.