Carers Week (June 8th- 14th 2020)

We are currently in Carers Week, an annual event with the goal of raising awareness to the importance of carers within the community. Now more than ever, it is clear how vital the role of carers have in maintaining a healthy and stable society. It is important to acknowledge there are many people who do not consider themselves to be carers but fulfill most, if not all of the core duties someone in such a role would have; this could be a child caring for a parent or an older sibling who is no longer able to perform basic daily tasks independently.

While working as a carer is a crucial role, it is also one that can be extremely stressful and challenging; the carers themselves often have to put their own physical and mental health at risk in order to ensure the wellbeing of others. By regularly manually handling people, carers put their own bodies under strain and at risk of serious injury that by extension puts the health and wellbeing of the people they are caring for under threat as well. Furthermore, it is by being depended on to such an extent for the people they are taking care of that means carers often lack freedom and a social life leaving them isolated from other people and unable to rest or spend time with friends or family.

Kihto Healthcare provide specialist beds and equipment to help make caring and treating people less stressful, improving the quality of life for both carer and patient.

The Timor Chair Bed can work as a bed, chair and hoist, improving a person’s mobility and reducing the extent of manual handling to be undertaken by their carer. This chair bed can take someone from a flat horizontal position, laying down to sitting up with little to no effort. This multi-functional product has a sliding seat action that assists moving the legs down while supporting the back of the legs and the spine. The Timor’s functions of head up/down, leg up/down stand up and sliding seat are all operated with an easy to understand and use handset. For people with pressure sores and ulcers on their body, the Timor can help redistribute the pressure on a person’s body, reducing ulcers and preventing any others from emerging in the future, improving a person’s mobility and other aspects of health such as circulation and skin hygiene.  The Timor can come with a nursing facility with a high/low function to help nurses care for patients with easier access.

Another common issue carers face is getting a healthy level of sleep when the people they are caring for need support overnight and when asleep. Carers need to be awake or wake up regularly throughout the night to check upon or move someone to ensure their comfort and health, this could be for breathing difficulties, pressure sores, weakness with muscles or other conditions. The Arctic turning bed can come with an auto box installed enabling the option for automated turning; the auto box has a wide range of turning and profiling programs that can cater to several conditions with the option of having a new program installed if there isn’t one available that fits the client. Once the appropriate program has been installed for the client, all that is needed for the program to run is to pick the time interval for the turning to take place: every 30 minutes, every hour or every 2 hours. With automated turning, both the client and carer can have a better quality of sleep without any assistance or interruptions needed benefiting their overall health.