Earlier this year we visited St George’s care home. Following a successful trial of the AutoTurn system, the team shared their positive experiences and improvements for their high-risk resident with complex pressure care needs. The testimonial is given by Caroline – Registered Manager, Deputy Manager, Vibin, and Nurse Janet.
About the home
St Georges is a 42 bedded care home that provides nursing and specialist care. This includes Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and bariatric care. St George’s provides high-quality care with a wide of facilities and activities for residents to enjoy.
Testimonial
Tell us about your experience of the AutoTurn with your residents
[Caroline]: “So we had a gentleman come in with a grade 3 to grade 4 pressure sore from the NHS hospital, and no matter what plan we had in place, it was still a grade 3 to 4. In 40 years odd years of nursing I’ve never known, and I know it sounds really stupid to say it, a grade 3 to 4 pressure heal at the rate it has, and the only thing that’s different is the AutoTurn.”
[Vibin]: This Gentleman has got so many medical conditions which cause further deterioration of the wound. He was developing pressure sores on every part of his body, not only on his pressure areas but even on other non-pressure areas. So, we were in a dilemma, what else can we do? All of a sudden, we saw this advertisement and decided to go for it, and miraculously he's healed.”
[Janet]: “With this gentleman he had quite intense pressure sores, and we were doing two hourly turns, sometimes hourly turns and it wasn’t really making that much difference. We kept on chopping and changing what we were actually using to try and help him, but it wasn’t making much difference. Since we’ve had this specialised mattress, it is really improved. His wounds now are unbelievable, really improved and I highly endorse this type of mattress, I know it is expensive but I do endorse that sort of mattress, it’s really good for something like that.”
How Did You Find the AutoTurn to Set Up and Use?
[Caroline]: “All we initially had to do, when it was put in I had to have a little two-minute training session with all the staff, saying you can pre-load it with how regular you want it to happen, and this is what you do and this is what you need to check every time you go in. But it was quite simple.”
Does the AutoTurn Benefit Your Care Staff as well as the Resident?
[Caroline]: “The good thing is it saves on staff time and it benefits the residents in so much that, you know in an ideal world we maybe would reposition someone every half an hour, but you’d need probably another ten staff in a shift to do that. The AutoTurn actually does it in-between for us so it benefits the resident with the pressure sores and our staff with the time. It gives me the reassurance that they’re being turned more regularly than we could do it staff-wise, and we’ve got the benefit from it.”
Would You Recommend the AutoTurn?
[Caroline]: “I’d recommend the AutoTurn to another home, it’s improved my gentleman’s grade 3 to grade 4 pressure sore, so if pressure care isn’t managed it’s going to break again and again, but this sore seems to be miraculously healing from the inside out.”
[Vibin]: Yes of course. If you’re thinking about buying for more people when it comes to you know complex situations like this yeah, it is there.
[Janet]: Highly recommended. Especially, as I said this gentleman he had I think there were about seven or eight pressure sores and they were all not getting any better, there was no improvement with them at all, we were trying everything. Since we’ve had this it’s a real massive improvement and I would highly recommend to any home to actually invest in getting one, in fact I wish that we had more than what we have.”
