Hand forces exerted by long-term care staff when pushing wheelchairs on compliant and non-compliant flooring.

Purpose-designed compliant flooring and carpeting have been promoted as a means for reducing fall-related injuries in high-risk environments, such as long-term care. However, it is not known whether these surfaces influence the forces that long-term care staff exert when pushing residents in wheelchairs. We studied 14 direct-care staff who pushed a loaded wheelchair instrumented with a triaxial load cell to test the effects on hand force of flooring overlay (vinyl versus carpet) and flooring subfloor (concrete versus compliant rubber [brand: SmartCells]).

External Hand Forces Exerted by Long-Term Care Staff to Push Floor-Based Lifts: Effects of Flooring System and Resident Weight.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of flooring type and resident weight on external hand forces required to push floor-based lifts in long-term care (LTC).

Background: Novel compliant flooring is designed to reduce fall-related injuries among LTC residents but may increase forces required for staff to perform pushing tasks. A motorized lift may offset the effect of flooring on push forces.

The effect of window size and lead time on pre-impact fall detection accuracy using support vector machine analysis of waist mounted inertial sensor data.

Falls are a major cause of death and morbidity in older adults. In recent years many researchers have examined the role of wearable inertial sensors (accelerometers and/or gyroscopes) to automatically detect falls. The primary goal of such fall monitors is to alert care providers of the fall event, who can then commence earlier treatment.

Enhancing clinical measures of postural stability with wearable sensors.

About 30% of individuals over the age of 65, and 50% over age 80, fall at least once per year. Fall-related injuries cost the Canadian health care system $2.8 billion annually.

Maximum principal strain correlates with spinal cord tissue damage in contusion and dislocation injuries in the rat cervical spine.

The heterogeneity of the primary mechanical mechanism of spinal cord injury (SCI) is not currently used to tailor treatment strategies because the effects of these distinct patterns of acute mechanical damage on long-term neuropathology have not been fully investigated. A computational model of SCI enables the dynamic analysis of mechanical forces and deformations within the spinal cord tissue that would otherwise not be visible from histological tissue sections. We created a dynamic, three-dimensional finite element (FE) model of the rat cervical spine and simulated contusion and dislocation SCI mechanisms.