Thursday morning, your father gets out of bed at 7:00 am to take a shower and to make himself breakfast. After watching the news he decides to do some work in the garden before he needs to drive to the hospital. Your mother will join him.They arrive at the hospital, walk to the department of cardiothoracic surgery and find your father's room.
When they enter the one-person room, your mother takes the chair. The only option left for you father is to lay down on the bed.
"Can you get me some water?" he asks.
He is a patient as of now.
While this might seem a bit odd to you, it happens every day. In healthcare we think we offer patient-centered care, but what we are actually doing is giving bed-centered care. Almost every part of the care we give takes place in the bed. Even though most patients (people!) are perfectly able to sit and walk, as soon as they enter their room on the department they turn into a dependent patient.
That's why three physiotherapists from the department of physical therapy (Shanna Bloemen, Yvonne Geurts and Frank Klomp) started a movement within the Radboudumc they've coined "Ban Bedcentricity". This is not a project or even a program, it's a way of thinking that changes the way we 'do' healthcare.
We often see 'the patient room of the future' with clean & slick interfaces on multiple screens, but still: the luxury bed in the center of the room as most important piece of furniture. Not only that, every screen you see is presented in such a way that you get the best view from the bed. Aside from the fact that a lot of patients that are currently treated in bed in hospitals will soon be treated in their homes in the near future, the bed will be come less important and will be used for it's purpose: to sleep.
Why is REshape involved in this? We innovate from a patient's perspective, together wíth patients ánd healthcare professionals. We see lot's of opportunities for wearable technology, gamification and virtual reality regarding this topic and hope to enable patients to be more autonomous. Wearable technology to monitor patients even when they leave the department, gamification to motivate them to start moving and virtual reality for those who really can't move but can still benefit from the 'thought' of moving.
To be continued, but we would love to hear your opinion and advice on this below.
Make mine an Eames Chair