Patients who are moved with the electric lift, that can accommodate heavier patients, report a greater sense of security and comfort in the transfer between bed to wheelchair or stretcher. The electric lift will help reduce the number of workplace injuries experienced as a result of manually lifting patients into position.

Yvonne Oxer, clinical team manager for the SRHC emergency department says the lift is greatly appreciated by staff who assist, on average, 80 patients a day.

“The emergency department team is very grateful to the foundation for this generous donation. This specialty patient lift, which works safely with our emergency department stretchers, will dramatically reduce the potential of injury to our patients and staff. It is an ergonomically safe solution to transferring and repositioning patients, which results in positive and healthy outcomes for our patients and job satisfaction for the staff,” says Oxer.

Health care aide staff members are most frequently responsible for transferring emergency patients onto stretchers in the health centre. Nurses and EMS staff also benefit from the ease in patient movement that the lift provides.

Interlake-Eastern Health Foundation executive director, Pamela McCallum, thanks donors to the foundation’s ‘Area of Interest’ fund (a fund where donors choose what they would like to support). In this case, donations to acute care were used to purchase the $7,600 electric patient lift.

“Adding a piece of equipment that will help both patients and staff means a lot to us,” said McCallum. “Thank you to our many donors across the region. We can’t make these purchases without their generousity to the Interlake-Eastern Health Foundation.”

Photo L-R: Mollianne Noel (health care aide), Alix Rempel (emergency nurse), Yvonne Oxer (clinical team manager for emergency department and special care unit), Stacey Boehm (emergency nurse educator), Pamela McCallum (executive director for the Foundation) and Nicolle Choquette (emergency CRN) are pictured in the resuscitation room at SRHC emergency department with the newly purchased electric patient lift shown to the left of the stretcher.