// First Aid: "Help for Helpers" //
// supervisors: Prof. Jürgen Goss and Dipl. Ing. Ralph Schieschke //
// Bachelor Thesis final project, 02/2011 //
Under the theme: First Aid, Help for Helpers, I designed an innovative, flexible transportation aid for the land-based rescue service. The “back-lift” ensures not only a safe patient transport, but deals also with the needs and welfare of emergency responders. The job of an ambulance service employee is mentally and physically very demanding and often exhausting.
Physical stresses, which occur mainly due to unadapted or wrong posture while carrying loads, frequently cause health problems to the rescue service employees. Often they show signs of damages to their human skeletal apparatus and suffer from serious backache.
External conditions such as confined spaces or steep stairways cannot be influenced by the rescue staff. Apart from the physical circumstances there are other factors that complicate the rescue, such as the increasing of the patient’s weight or the form of the bodily injury. These unpredictable facts create situations, where the removal of the patient is only possible though a dedicated physical effort of the rescue service staff.
This effort implicates inevitably that erroneous holding positions must be taken to manoeuver the patient with the barrow to the trolley of the ambulance. The Backlift can ameliorate and facilitate considerably the work of the rescue service by its specific ergonomic design.
The Backlift consists of different components: The stretcher, which is the lying surface for the patient.
The movably mounted intermediate elements to which the rotating handles are attached and thus create a flexible connection between the barrow and the front carrier.
The waistcoat with an integrated rail structure: It enables the carrier to vary the height of the stretcher. This minimizes its inclination angle and therefore reduces the pressure on the front carrier.
The Backlift in different scenarios.
