Buckhead Rotary Club Donates Specialty Patient Beds
Hercules Beds Help Patients and Staff Prevent Injuries
On Rebecca Williamson’s last day at Shepherd Center, she was looking forward to returning home to southern Missouri. She was particularly excited to see her two dogs — Charlie, a Shih Tzu, and Krypto, a Rottweiler.
Rebecca had been at Shepherd for several months and was recovering from a spinal cord injury with the help of a team of nurses, therapists, and doctors. But in addition to her care team, a piece of technology was also helping in her recovery — a Hercules bed.
Hercules beds are equipped with a system that allows nurses and therapists to adjust a patient’s position in bed at the touch of a button. Kimberly Levenson, RN, BSN, CRRN, CWOCN, CFCN, says that it’s normal for patients to slide down in their hospital bed throughout the day, and this can happen even more frequently for patients with high spasticity after a spinal cord injury. The conveyor belt-like technology makes transferring them back to the head of the bed easier, reducing the risk of pressure sores and aspiration, she says. The tech also helps staff and caregivers.
“It reduces the risk of staff injuries,” Levenson says. “You aren’t manually lifting and twisting and pulling somebody in the bed. It’s a very gentle, non-traumatic way to reposition a patient.”
Rebecca shares the sentiment — she says that compared to the standard bed she used at her acute care hospital, the Hercules beds allow for more gentle repositioning.
“It prevents being tossed around in the bed,” she says. “That’s the biggest thing.”
Shepherd Center currently only has 90 Hercules beds — not enough to meet the demand, Levenson says. She frequently performs what she calls “musical beds,” moving the Hercules beds to where they’re needed most. But thanks to the generosity of the Buckhead Rotary Club and its sister club, the Suceava-Bucovina Rotary Club in Romania, as well as the Rotary Foundation, Shepherd Center added nine new Hercules beds to its inventory. These beds will help patients like Rebecca and hospital staff like Kimberly, creating a safer environment where patients and caregivers can focus on recovery.
Written by Erin Kenney
With five decades of experience, Shepherd Center provides world-class clinical care, research, and family support for people experiencing the most complex conditions, including spinal cord and brain injuries, multi-trauma, traumatic amputations, stroke, multiple sclerosis, and pain. An elite center ranked by U.S. News as one of the nation’s top hospitals for rehabilitation, Shepherd Center is also recognized as both Spinal Cord Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems. Shepherd Center treats thousands of patients annually with unmatched expertise and unwavering compassion to help them begin again.