The Carry Chair

So we are here in a busy office environment and we are now going to have to move our casualty from point A to point B and we need to use an appropriate method to do this. If the patient can not walk for themselves or if it's not appropriate for the patient to walk, then we have to use a piece of equipment to do that. And today we are going to have a look at the Ferno Carry Chair. First of all, we're going to have a look at the safety aspects and things we need to check on the chair before we ever put a patient on it. And they start off with the size of the patient.

The carry chair will have a sticker on it which basically gives a maximum carrying capacity and this particular one is 114 kilograms, so anybody weighing more than 114 kilograms must not be transported in this chair. The next thing we have to do is to make sure the strap that is going to hold a patient on the chair is in place, is intact, is not damaged and actually works and operates correctly. The next thing we have to do is to check the chair and the actual material that fits onto the chair, to make sure there is no fraying, there is no damage and there is no rips or tears. Then we move down to the seat. The seat itself has to have no rips and the zip, which you can clearly see on the back of the chair, is intact, is fully zipped and is not broken in any way. Because if we put a patient on there with any damage to these pieces of material, then there is a high risk the patient will actually damage themselves or damage the chair when they sit on it.

Something else that is important with this carry chair is the surface you are going to be using it on. We need to make sure that the wheels are running freely, there is no damage to the wheels, they are not jammed, broken or damaged in any way and the surface that we are going to use them on needs to be nice, flat, smooth surface. These will not work on gravel, they will not work on grass and they have to be on a nice surface that we can actually push and use the wheels on. We are now going to have a look at setting the chair up, ready for use. So the first thing we do is actually move the chair through the frame, expand the back and clip it into the locking mechanism at the back of the chair. Make sure that is fitted tightly in the groove, if it isn't the unit will collapse. So once it is in that groove, make sure it is firm. Set the seat down on its base, making sure that you never ever leave the back of the chair. The most important position in a carry chair is always the back of the chair. If you let go of the back of the chair, it has no stability whatsoever and the patient will very quickly fall backwards and injure themselves. So when the chair is made, the person standing at the back never lets go of the chair and never moves from this position.

The next thing we do is take a blanket and we open the blanket up fully to be able to wrap the patient's arms. So we go across the back of the chair, so when the patient sits in the chair, we can bring the blanket back, enclosing both of their arms inside of the blanket and the strap at the back of the chair then goes around the patients' arms and the blanket and clicks and locks across the centre of the chest. The chair must not be used without the clip situated in place, tightened and fitting properly. The reason for this is that when we tip the chair back to actually use so long as the wheels on the back of the chair, the patient if we're not careful, will throw their arms out. As soon as you throw their arms out on the chair, it overbalances left or right, forwards or backwards, the patient on the chair and we need to keep the patient central, comfortable, tidy and strapped on to the chair at all times. Otherwise, this is a risk to me, but more important, it is a risk to the patient because if the chair falls, they are going to hurt themselves even more.

This is a Ferno carrying chair, however, there are many other manufacturers and different designs on the market. Please make sure that before you use a chair, no matter what type it is, you read the manufacturer's handbooks and you train and practice with it before use. It is too late once it goes wrong. The principles are always the same. The patient must remain centred, feet on the actual step, arms enclosed and all straps must be in place before the patient is moved on the carry chair. So from this point on, it is a two-person operation. The one person at the back of the chair holds the chair and gets a firm footing and a firm grip. So there is no way the chair can go backwards because it is under my control at all times. The second person wraps the patient's arms in a blanket to keep the arms in and safe. Once the blanket is wrapped, the side straps or the retaining strap is put in position, locked, tightened and tested.

There needs to be no movement, no spare space. The whole idea of the strap is to keep the patients' arms in the actual carry chair itself and the idea of wrapping the blanket around is to make sure that they can not reach out once we tip the chair back. Now it is safe to actually incline the chair back onto the wheels and it now becomes a chair that is movable. So when the patient is safely wrapped and comfortable in the chair, we now tip the chair back and we progress on a nice flat surface at a nice steady pace, telling the patient all the time that they are safe and under our control.

Where possible, we want to avoid carrying patients up or downstairs. So if we can use a stairlift or a lift, then utilize those in preference over carrying patients up and downstairs, because of the safety and risk hazard. On this occasion, for demonstration purposes, we are going to show the carry chair actually going down the staircase. Okay? So first of all, we take the chair right to the edge of the first step, the patient at the back gets a good grip, the patient at the front takes hold of the base of the step and we go down nice and steady in a controlled manner, one step at a time. Make sure you have got a good grip and your feet are firmly placed on the steps every time.