Proposal of One-Sided of a Sheet Diagonal Pull-up Type Body Postural Change Device for Nursing Care

In this paper, a novel mechanism one-sided of a sheet diagonal pull-up type body postural rotation device for nursing care was proposed and evaluated. Currently, the heavy workload of the nursing is harming the health of nurses. Because nurses are physically demanding, it is estimated that more than 80% of nurses have experienced their back pain. The main cause of the lower back pain is said that "repositioning/moving on bed". Recently, due to the influence of the new corona virus, the chances of changing the position by prone position therapy have increased, and the burden on nurses has increased. In our method, the sheet laid under the sleeping patient is pulled-up diagonally by using the mechanism of moving a pulley with a linear actuator. As a result, the pulley is moved horizontally and the rope is pulled up at the same time, enabling diagonal pulling up process. A 98 N plastic box (on behalf of the subject) is laid on the cotton sheet, and the cotton sheet is pulled up by the proposed device. (1) By using 1500 N linear actuator, the subject (plastic box) laid angle was able to change 0 deg to 35 deg during 0.5 m liner actuator movement. By increasing the number of pulleys to two, the subject (plastic box) laid angle was able to change 0 deg to 100 deg. (2) By comparing between one-sided of the sheet diagonal pull-up and the vertical pull-up (so-called "lift"), the subject was repeatedly slipped off from the sheet, and became an unstable load cell force waveform. The proposed system could change body postural rotation by using a novel mechanism of the sheet one-sided diagonal pull-up mechanism, which uses the linear actuator to move pulleys. It has the potential to build a new nursing method that reduces the burden by mechanizing the heavy work of re-positioning/moving process on bed.