Hospital beds on last legs

All 11 are now so old that at times three in a unit where at any one time up to 30% of the patients come from Bexhill may be out of action because of technical faults.

The League of Friends of Bexhill Hospital was told last Thursday that it can take staff more than an hour to transfer a seriously-ill patient to a replacement bed.

Hiring a bed when one of the unit's ageing examples is out of commission costs 140 in transport and 140 a day rental.

Pauline Simes, lead nurse, critical care, accompanied by colleague Fiona Stedman, brought colour brochures illustrating new beds to last Thursday's meeting of the Bexhill league's general committee.

The complex Hill-Rom beds cost an eye-watering 17,895 each.

But Pauline explained: "These are the beds that will enable patients to get out of critical care much, much quicker because they won't have the complications that they have now."

The range of specialised features includes power-operation to tilt the patient at the optimum 45 degrees to avoid pulmonary difficulties and power operation to turn them gently.

The bed weighs the patient so that medication can be tailored to body mass and the air pressure in the mattresses is adjusted to match.

The pressing need for the beds was the largest single item of a list of hospital requests put before the meeting.

Jim Davey, director of operations for East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, said in answer to questions that of an annual capital budget of 7m, the Trust had just 2m a year to spend on new and replacement equipment.

Ideally, the Trust would like every patient to have the benefits of a bed of Hill-Rom standards.

But the reality was that they would not be a priority even for the critical care unit.

After the Trust guests had left the meeting, league committee members and officers debated at length what action to take.

On the basis that they would be of direct benefit to critically-ill patients from Bexhill, they voted to buy six beds.

The cost made up 107,000 out of a total of 221,455 worth of equipment agreed at the meeting.