A hospital may have the most comprehensive, state-of-the-art patient TV systems money can buy, with every feature imaginable all installed in the package, but without the right mount attached to it, it’s never going to do a good job of satisfying both patients and health staff. With that in mind, let’s go over six important reasons why you need decent mounting for any bedside healthcare system.
1. Patient ease of use
The perfect patient setup for a healthcare TV system is one where the maximum number of patients are able to control the system themselves, regardless of their ailments. This means that mounts needs to have a long reach to accommodate how the patient is positioned in bed, and versatile vertical positioning in line with their eyes and hands.
2. Medical staff ease of use
Doctors, nurses, caregivers and other hospital staff will regularly be attending to patients at their bedside, and need to have full access to them without being hindered. Therefore the mounting arm needs to have a high degree of rotational spin so it can be quickly moved to one side. However, too much spin and the arm could move out of control which poses risk. This means the bedside arm needs to be finely balanced through precision engineering to stop this happening.
3. Easy maintenance
Medical staff need to work with tools and apparatus that are easy to wipe down and sterilize as this will be done daily. This means they don’t want a system that has a lot of hard-to-access parts where dirt or residue can gather. The right medical arm will be built with this in mind, so that staff can spend minimal type cleaning each day.
4. Proper safety
As we’ve mentioned, in addition to arms needing to be finely balanced, there also needs to be mechanisms in place in case a patient or staff member does accidentally push the bedside arm at a much greater force than is necessary. Angle stops built into arms are a great method that prevents this, by automatically stopping the arms move past a certain point.
Discreet cable management is another safety feature proper mounting arms have. It ensures that all cables around housed within the arm itself, without even being seen by staff or patients, so there is no way a cable can become loose or cause any health hazards from spills or tripping.
5. Longevity
Mounting surfaces need to be made with robust materials rather than cheap plastics to ensure they can operate without issue for many years. They also need to have undergone extensive quality control where every single component from the internal gas spring to the spigot has been proven to operate through many thousands of cycles.
6. Versatile mounting options for patient TV systems
Depending on how a hospital is laid out, some may require that systems around mounted on the floor, while others are installed on ceilings. Each option comes with different logistical requirements, so it is important to choose mounts purpose-built for each.
It’s also important to note that different patient systems will differ in weight, so a mount that can be finely-calibrated to different weight is essential. Some hospitals may also opt for a mount where the patient’s own tablet device can be attached, so they need to account for the weight of numerous devices that may be attached to them daily, and provide the right resistance to operate without recalibration.
While highly-technical mounts such as the ones we’ve described above are essential for smooth operations in hospitals, there are also other use cases they’re ideal for too. Check out how else they can be of benefit in this article: Folcrom Arms – A Versatile Way To Aid The Workplace
And, for more on the patient TV systems themselves, make sure you check out our hand guide to choosing a patient television system.