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Bariatric Rehabilitation Physical Therapy
With obesity in America on the rise, you can bet that many people will again make a New Year’s resolution to lose the weight. For an average-sized person, dropping 10 to 20 pounds will make them feel better. But what about the person of size who needs to drop 300 to 400 pounds in order to survive? For that person, help has arrived in the form of bariatric rehabilitation.
STARTING AT THE BEGINNING
According to Michael Dionne, PT, director at Choice Physical Therapy, Gainesville, Ga, the state of bariatric rehabilitation is in its infancy because a lot of facilities looking to specialize in bariatric care lack funding for the equipment needed to treat these patients.
What facilities are starting to move to is described in Dionne’s book, Among Giants: the bariatric suite, which is a room specialized for the care of patients of size.
In the bariatric suite, Dionne says a 5-foot service area around the bed is ideal because it enables the caregiver to help maneuver.
“Consider that the patient is using a 35- to 40-inch-width rolling walker and you are guarding them. You are standing on the side so that you can guard the patient or roll their wheelchair around the foot of the bed and be on the side of them,” he says. “The point here is that if you are walking somebody, and let’s say they start to stumble and you need to redirect them toward the wheelchair, you cannot be behind them because you will end up trapping yourself. That’s why we want that 5-foot service area around the bed.” A 5-foot service area around a bariatric patient’s bed is ideal because it gives the caregiver ample room to maneuver the patient.
In addition to the wider service area around the bed, Dionne says a double-entry door to the suite makes more sense. He says most hospital doors are 43 inches wide. A double-entry door (about 58 inches wide) makes it easier to maneuver the bariatric bed in and out of the room.
“A double-door entry is ideal so that you can get the bariatric bed in and out to meet your evacuation policy, as well as bring equipment in and out without compromise due to architectural barriers,” he says. “The double-door entry is just a huge bonus in that regard.”
Dionne also believes a bathroom in a bariatric suite does not make sense.
“If you have a patient in the hospital who has a dependency, they’re not going to use the bathroom,” he says. “That bathroom takes up 30% of the room. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could open up that bathroom area to increase the service area around the bed?”
His recommendations for architectural designs of a bariatric suite also include a foldaway or retractable wall separating a bathroom area from the regular room. This enables the actual room space to be extended, in addition to providing a floor-mounted toilet and wall-mounted nozzle for showers.
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