The right ceiling hoist and walking sling can be crucial in giving your patients the comfort and support they need when they’re transferred to bedrooms, lounge spaces, and treatment rooms, these solutions can also be a powerful addition to certain recovery programs too. Ceiling hoists safely and securely hold patients aloft so that they have the confidence to practice natural movement without any unnecessary pain, discomfort, or risk.
How Walking Slings and Ceiling Hoists Support Gait Training
A ceiling hoist and walking sling can hold an injured or unwell patient in place so that they need minimal input from a medical professional when they’re practicing gait training. This can help to reduce the risk of bedsores, as well as minimising the chances of muscle atrophy during recovery.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to the perfect gait training and rehabilitation strategy, studies have shown that common ratings like the Berg Balance Scale and the Chedoke-McMaster Stroke assessment scale find ceiling hoists to be a great addition to rehabilitation practices. Because they’re designed to hold significant amounts of weight safely and securely for extended periods of time, ceiling hoists can be a safe and efficient way for doctors to perform assessments in physiotherapy wards.
Using Ceiling Hoists for Gait Training
Depending on the layout of a physiotherapy room, a ceiling hoist can be installed in a range of different styles to provide patients and users with easy access to everything from walking bars, to couches and treadmills. A strong hoist allows the patient to carefully practice ambulation by turning, walking forwards, and walking backward. The overhead hoist can even move a patient forwards and backward slowly and carefully to promote walking.
Ceiling hoists remove a lot of the risk associated with gait training and ambulation programs, by ensuring that nurses don’t have to manually handle patients to help them. Additionally, they provide patients with the additional security they need to regain their confidence when it comes to exploring movement and walking practices. Because ceiling hoists don’t restrict a patient, they can move as freely as they like depending on their injuries, and also rely on the strong slings for support whenever necessary.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that ceiling hoists don’t get in the way of other patients who might not need the same hoist support during their gait training sessions. This means that multiple patients can be active in the same space at the same time, reducing the need for extra investments in a healthcare or rehabilitation environment.
A Safe Way to Practice Gait Training
Ceiling hoists are available in a wide configuration of shapes and sizes to suit almost any patient. They give nurses and doctors easy access to the person they’re caring for during a gait training or ambulation practice, and they also ensure that once a patient is worn out or overwhelmed, they can be safely transferred back into a wheelchair or bed.
If you have any questions about any of our health care solutions please contact us directly on 1300 931 893