‘The AutoTurn is Invaluable': Royal British Legion Case Study
The Royal British Legion (RBL) are a national charity that support the Armed Forces community. With over 180,000 members, 110,000 volunteers and a network of partners and charities, the RBL are the largest Armed Forces charity that provide lifelong support to serving and ex-serving personnel and their families.
The RBL are dedicated to helping people live on through life by have their own care homes for older veterans, their families and support carers. There are six care homes across the Armed Forces community and their families, with some homes providing specialist dementia care.
Opera has an established relationship with the RBL and have provided profiling beds and mattresses for their care homes on previous occasions. Following the recent launch of the AutoTurn Lateral Turning System, Opera reached out to RBL offering a complimentary trial within one of their care homes. The AutoTurn redistributes pressure through its inflating and deflating air cells at a constant and comfortable flow, utilising the 0-30° lateral turning positioning system for prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers. The positive feedback from other care providers combined with the hassle-free trial service led to the RBL accepting the offer and trying the AutoTurn for their patients and care team.
Opera provided two AutoTurn systems for the RBL’s 86 bed care home. After just two days the team at the home decided to purchase the product and since the trial ended have purchased a further six. ‘We intend to buy a lot more as we have found them invaluable in numerous ways’ says James Ashton, Facilities and Hospitality Manager at The Royal British Legion. James explains how the AutoTurn has had multiple benefits for the team at RBL:
Staff time saving
"As a business we see the staff time saving, which is considerable. Turning a resident who is prone to skin tears, bruising and in some cases finds being turned daunting, frightening, or painful, takes around 10 to 15 minutes including the relevant paperwork. This happens once an hour. We have separated our care home into sections for the care team to manage effectively. What we found was the care team on the side which had the AutoTurn were able to complete their routine workloads almost 60 minutes quicker, compared to the team without it. This was because rather than recording a turn, it has already been pre-recorded by the installation of the device. Also, this was simply based on the time it took to observe the AutoTurn function against having to do the physical turn."
Reduction in pressure sores
"More importantly we found that residents at a high-risk of pressure sores who were previously on hourly manual turning plans took on average 3 weeks to reduce. They also had more recorded incidents of bruising or skin tears as well as stress reactions due to the physical moving involved in repositioning. However, those with the AutoTurn system we saw reductions in pressure sores in just over half the time. We recorded zero incidents of skin tears or bruising and of the 6 AutoTurn patients there was only 1 recorded incident of a stress reaction, and this was on the first use."
Helps provide the best care
"I cannot stress enough the value we place upon these devices not only as a financial saving but as a benefit to our residents. Furthermore, there is a real pressure lifted from the staff and this is a small gratuity based upon what they’ve given over the last few years. The Opera AutoTurn System is not a helpful aid but an essential tool in providing the best care we can. An essential tool for care workers to perform to their best and an essential tool to assist in a financially difficult business sector. I cannot speak highly enough of them and fully expect to have the AutoTurn in place for all our repositioned residents within 2 years."