subject: Hospital Transport Chair Improves On Age-old Design [print this page] There is now a modern hospital transport chair design that is a dramatic improvement on the classic, standard wheelchair. Built from the ground up with the needs and input of the mobility impaired, caregivers, doctors and institutional attendants in mind, hospital transport chairs are now available which overcome many of the problems and limitations which have been passed down since the first commercial wheelchairs became available.
The modern wheelchair has origins going back all the way to the 16th century. Designed for a monarch of Spain, these so-called "invalid chairs" were heavy, wooden affairs, modeled after wing-backed chairs, either to keep the patient warm or to keep the occupant from falling out. Wheels were added later, with initial attempts having larger wheels in front and smaller wheels in back. In the 18th and 19th centuries, attempts were made to build wheelchairs from wicker; however, this proved impractical, as wicker, while much lighter than wood, is not strong enough to stand up to everyday use.
What we now know as the standard, x-brace wheel chair was developed after Herbert Everest, a mining engineer, became paraplegic after a 1919 mining accident. Dissatisfied with the available chairs, Everest worked with friend and mechanical engineer Harry Jennings to design and build a lighter, more practical, folding wheelchair design. Forming a company, Everest & Jennings, the partners began manufacturing and selling the first commercially-available wheelchairs. By 1973, sixty years later, the company had manufactured its 1 millionth chair.
From 1933, when the first x-brace wheelchairs went on the market, through the late 1990s, hospital transport wheelchairs had hardly changed. While a vast improvement over wooden or wicker chairs, standard, folding wheelchairs still have inherent issues, especially where patient transfer is concerned. Mechanical engineers, working with healthcare providers, patients and patient transport experts, decided to take a fresh look at the problem.
The resulting design does away with many of the problems of standard wheelchairs. Rather than using the arm rests as integral parts of the chair, like some hold-over from antique wing backed chairs, the arm rests lift and move completely out of the way. This allows for patient transfer without the need to lift the patient physically out of the chair. Instead, the patient may simply be moved directly from the side of the chair to hospital bed or exam table.
Instead of attempting to make one type of chair fit both attended and self-propelled use cases, the engineers decided to focus on a chair intended exclusively for hospital transport use. The chair they built is designed to be pushed, and because of this, it has been engineered to stand taller, with a higher push-bar at the back. This allows for continuous transports, without the attendant or volunteer becoming fatigued. Additionally, the designers took into account the traditional wheelchair's manual braking system and replaced it with an automatic system. When the transporter takes his or her hands from the push bar, the chair stops.
Rugged, durable, strong and light, these new hospital transport chairs are ages ahead of the old-fashioned wheelchairs of yesteryear.
