A recent incident at Bunbury Regional Hospital has highlighted the need to supersize the health system to meet the threat posed to staff and patients from increasing obesity. The GWN story featured complaints from the family of a woman weighing more than 150kg, who slid to the floor during transfer from an Emergency Department trolley to a hospital bed. The family expressed concern that the woman then had to remain on the floor until lifting equipment was wheeled in to hoist her onto the bed.
The hospital has strict staff guidelines regarding the handling of bariatric patients. They have installed hydraulic lifting equipment to reduce risk of injury, and scaled up the strength and size of equipment generally. In extreme cases they have no choice but to transfer bariatric patients to specialist facilities with the capacity to deal with them.
Obesity is a life threatening disease, and due mainly to lifestyle choices, it is becoming an epidemic. Health services must scale up their techniques for dealing with it.
Airlines are also having to confront the problem growing obesity, with passengers no longer able to be accommodated in one seat, and cargo masters unable to use standard average weights in calculating load balance data, essential to the safe operation of aircraft.