JMH Transitional Care Receives State-of-the-Art Hospital Beds After Grant

By Benjamin Cox on April 27, 2022 at 3:12pm

Jacksonville Memorial Hospital’s Transitional Care Unit has received new state-of-the art hospital beds through a grant distributed through the Jacksonville Memorial Foundation.

The Maurice & Ruby Funk Trust provided $160,000 for the purchase of 15 “smart” beds for the unit.

Nurse Manager of the TCU, Jessica Ford says the beds will help reduce patient falls: “There is a couple of different features with the beds. The first thing, and the most important, is the bed alarm. In previous models, when a nurse would get the patient up for therapy or to use the restroom, you had to turn the alarm off. Well, when they would put them back into bed, sometimes due to human error, the nurse may forget to turn that bed alarm back on. With these new beds, they actually have a reminder. When a nurse puts a patient back to bed, the bed will actually alarm after so many seconds if a nurse forgets to turn the alarm back on. There is also visual reminders. The bed will have an orange light on if the alarm or the brake is not set, and it will turn green which means that the alarm or the brake is set.”

Ford says the beds also focus on patient comfort featuring both an integrated bed extender and a low air loss mattress to help prevent skin breakdown and pressure injuries.

Ford says the beds aren’t short on accommodating other patient comfort: “One thing that we noted with falls or when patients were getting out of bed when they shouldn’t be was the fact that they were reaching for a charger cord or reaching for their cellphone. With these beds, they actually have a built in USB port for charging right on the hand rail so a cellphone can sit in this little caddie, and a patient can charge their cellphone so there is no more dropping a cellphone or dropping a charger as a patient goes to lay a phone on the bedside table.”

Ford says that the purchase of the beds wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the Funk Trust through the Jacksonville Memorial Foundation.