Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: HRC), this week introduced to surgical professionals the new Bard Parker® Plus Blade with Loader, an innovation designed to enhance safety in the operating room, and a safety upgrade to its Allen® Advance Table.
New Bard-Parker® Plus Blade with Loader
Sharps injuries are an ever-present issue in the operating room (OR), occurring more than 1,000 times a day in the healthcare setting across the U.S. Greater than 170 of those injuries are from sharp surgical scalpels1, and 95 percent of injuries occur to healthcare workers’ most important tool: their hands2. These injuries, whether they occur in loading, unloading, passing or actively using the blade, are a real danger to OR staff.
The new, single-use Bard-Parker Plus Blade with Loader, which will be available to the market this summer, contains a convenient, puncture-resistant loading cartridge, allowing an OR team member to safely put a surgical blade onto their existing conventional surgical handle without ever needing to touch a sharp blade with their fingers or load a blade using forceps. Surgeons can use the same Bard-Parker® blades they have trusted for years, while helping to protect staff.
Safety Enhancement to Allen® Advance Table
In its latest OR table safety innovation, Hill-Rom has created a new pinless H-bracket option for the Allen® Advance Table, a specialty OR table for complex surgical procedures. The new bracket design allows surgical teams to easily attach the top and make height adjustments without utilizing cross-pins to secure the patient support top to the Allen Advance Table base, saving time and making the table even easier to use. The new bracket option retains the pinned H-bracket version’s safety features, which prevent the table top from falling should the adjustment not be made properly.
The Allen Advance Table offers radiolucency through the whole working length of the table and is ideal for surgeries that require the patient to be re-positioned from supine to prone or vice versa, rotating a full 360 degrees.
Hill-Rom Surgical Solutions: Advancing Surgical Practices
In addition to its product and technology focus at AORN, Hill-Rom is focused on enhancing OR nurses1 knowledge of the latest safety practices. These include a CE-eligible course on implementing sharps safety best practices, which will discuss information and guidance that is available from regulatory agencies and professional organizations, as well as safety products that help mitigate the hazards of sharp instrument injury.
In addition, Hill-Rom is hosting an executive leadership symposium and simulation activity, both focused on patient positioning. Positioning patients in the OR is a high-volume activity that can be perceived as routine rather than a unique set of complex considerations with high risk implications. These educational initiatives explore the correlation between effective communication and positioning safety, and provide an opportunity to practice various positioning techniques.
About Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc.
Hill-Rom is a leading global medical technology company whose products, services and more than 10,000 employees worldwide help people get better care inside and outside the hospital. Our innovations in five core areas – Advancing Mobility, Wound Care and Prevention, Patient Monitoring and Diagnostics, Surgical Safety and Efficiency, and Respiratory Health – improve clinical and economic outcomes and ensure caregivers in more than 100 countries have the products they need to protect their patients, speed up recoveries and manage conditions. Every day, around the world, we enhance outcomes for patients and their caregivers. Learn more at hill-rom.com.
- Jagger J, Berger R, Phillips EK, Parker G, Gomaa AE. Increase in Sharps Injuries in Surgical Settings Versus Nonsurgical Settings after Passage of National NeedlestickLegislation. J Am CollSurg2010; 210: 496-502.
- EPINet Report for Needlestick and Sharp Object Injuries Jan. 2014-Dec. 31, 2014.
