Code Blue… to the scooters! A Chinese hospital’s long halls have meant nurses have to make long hauls when responding to a patient emergency. With the lives of preemies and newborns at stake, the MCH Institute in Wuhan, Hubei Province has issued scooters and bikes to nurses so they can get to the scene as fast as possible.
The hospital’s neonatal unit is designed with a pair of 80-meter (262.5 ft) long hallways extending outwards in opposite directions from the main nursing station. If your baby’s room is at the far end of one corridor, well, there’d better not be any sudden problems.
Since the MCH Institute is a hospital, however, and "problems" are the reason for their existence in the first place, getting the nurses to where they need to be is priority number one.
A system of human-sized pneumatic tubes was considered but the nurse’s union shot that idea down so on to Plan B: scooters and bicycles! “For us, time is the most important consideration,” explained the neonatal department’s head nurse. “The condition of seriously ill newborns is extremely delicate, and we have to provide them with round-the-clock care. If their condition changes, we need a nurse to be on the spot within seconds to provide treatment.”
Testing proved the wisdom of the concept as nurses employing a kick scooter or bicycle were able to cut their average response times by 7 seconds – no small potatoes in cases where every second counts!
“The scooters and bicycles are sterilized every day along with all the other medical equipment,” according to the head nurse, “and in the interest of safety, these vehicles are absolutely not allowed into the hospital rooms. Finally, these vehicles have been provided solely in order to travel the corridors in the case of an emergency.” One question: do the scooters and bikes have flashing lights and sirens? Because that would be awesome. (via Rocketnews24, Insight China, and Zenback)
