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I work on a med/surge unit and all day long, men can lay in perfect comfort to urinate in a convenient urinal. But WOMEN with horrible injuries have to be rolled to the side in extreme pain then have to sit on a bedpan and basically pee all over themselves anyway. We even put paper chucks on TOP of the bed pans because the bedpan just sticks to their skin and we cant get it out especially with heavy women. For a women to pee, we easily will use 2 full chucks and if a drop of urine makes it way on to the sheets, we have to do a bed change too.
Please tell me why we just dont hand them a Poise pad or even a toddler's pampers diaper to urinate easily, cleanly and comfortably? I have used both in emergency situations and they work AMAZING!!! Why O why are we still using bedpans for women?!?!?!
I guess I'm not sure why people are so weirded out at the thought of a female patient voiding into some kind of disposable brief/ pad.I would assume the brief/ pad would be fitted over the perineal area (between the legs) at the time of voiding so it's not like the patient would just be going all over the bed.
The urine would simply be absorbed into the brief/ pad with no wet mess like with a bedpan. That sounds amazingly efficient and tidy to me, assuming the brief/ pad is fitted enough to the body and is absorbant enough.
I'd take that any day over a hard, cold, nasty bedpan!
Have you ever tried to pee laying down in a bed? Bedpan or otherwise, it's hard to do.
Going off on a bit of a tangent here....
I've never understood why "adult briefs" aren't made with a proportional amount of the gel-crystals like baby/toddler diapers are? I know that the almighty dollar is ultimately to blame here, but when it comes to the ultimate cost in extra chux pads, extra bed linen laundry, extra skin breakdown problems.... wouldn't it be cheaper in the end (no pun intended!) to just have BETTER briefs on an incontinent patient?
The disposable diapers my son wore fifteen years ago (and yes, calling it a "baby diaper" or "toddler diaper" really is appropriate when the item being discussed is actually intended to be placed on a baby or toddler... when these terms were used in this thread, that was what was meant -- child-sized diapers, not briefs intended for an adult to wear -- not sure why people get all upset about that fact?)... anyway, the disposable baby diapers from the turn of the century were capable of holding WAY more liquid volume than an adult-sized brief will these days, and the baby's skin will be all but dry when the diaper is full and bulging, whereas the adult's skin is still damp when the brief is wet. How about we get Pampers / Huggies / Luvs to make adult-sized incontinence products?
And back to the ORIGINAL INTENT of this thread -- I'm another that can't see why everyone is having so much trouble understanding the OP's comments.
Let me try to spell it out for those who just don't get it: If someone is truly bedridden and proper placement onto a bedpan is difficult (patient unable to lift hips, patient unable to sit in a High Fowler position, etc.), the OP would like to offer that patient a child-sized diaper (the kind that has the special high-absorption crystals to prevent leaking/spilling) to tuck between the patient's legs ON DEMAND (not incontinence!) so the patient can urinate into the diaper.
The diaper is then removed, the patient's genital area is wiped clean/dry, and life goes on without having to further manipulate the patient to wash the legs / buttocks / back that all got wet when the urine leaked everywhere (plus changing the chux and sheets), either while the patient was urinating, or when the patient was rolled off the pan and the pan tipped and spilled all over the bed.
Additionally, using a super-absorbent diaper as a form of female urinal is a one-person assist type of situation, whereas rolling a patient to (attempt to) properly place a bedpan is often a two-person task. How many patients end up with an episode of incontinence anyway because there is a 20-minute wait to find another free staff member who can assist with placing the bedpan?
As for inventions, I'm envisioning a combination of a narrow bowl or jar-shaped contraption that is also covered in baby-diaper-materials. The soft poofy diaper material could be pressed securely against the sensitive genital area without causing discomfort (unlike a hard plastic edge) and would catch any drips that are attempting to travel up the gluteal cleft.
It would be a disposable / one-time-use device (unless the neck area was detachable/disposable and the bowl/jar part was reuseable) and so cost would be an issue, but when you factor in the cost of extra staffing (for two-person rolling) and extra chux pads and extra laundering costs, it might be a wash financially.
And it would DEFINITELY score better on the almighty Customer Satisfaction Survey.... patients would be able to void more quickly (no long wait for a second person to be available), they'd be more comfortable pain-wise, they'd be more comfortable wetness-wise, and they'd be more comfortable dignity-wise.
And another tangent -- emesis basins -- I like the disposable cardboard ones (made out of the same material as the drink carriers at McDonald's) rather than a bag or a tiny bowl. I'm a huge projectile barfer, so I need a washbasin at a minimum -- those little tiny emesis bowls are pointless for catching anything more than baby spit-up!
And on a similar topic, why do so many hospitals still use plastic emesis basins that must be dumped and rinsed (which is gross and increases the risk of spreading contagions) instead of disposable emesis bags?
Amen! I throw them out after one barf. You can never get the smell of vomit out of there, and if you're already nauseated that's just gonna set you off all over again.
Going off on a bit of a tangent here....I've never understood why "adult briefs" aren't made with a proportional amount of the gel-crystals like baby/toddler diapers are? I know that the almighty dollar is ultimately to blame here, but when it comes to the ultimate cost in extra chux pads, extra bed linen laundry, extra skin breakdown problems.... wouldn't it be cheaper in the end (no pun intended!) to just have BETTER briefs on an incontinent patient?
The disposable diapers my son wore fifteen years ago (and yes, calling it a "baby diaper" or "toddler diaper" really is appropriate when the item being discussed is actually intended to be placed on a baby or toddler... when these terms were used in this thread, that was what was meant -- child-sized diapers, not briefs intended for an adult to wear -- not sure why people get all upset about that fact?)... anyway, the disposable baby diapers from the turn of the century were capable of holding WAY more liquid volume than an adult-sized brief will these days, and the baby's skin will be all but dry when the diaper is full and bulging, whereas the adult's skin is still damp when the brief is wet. How about we get Pampers / Huggies / Luvs to make adult-sized incontinence products?
Yeah, adult briefs are worthless. They're basically tissues in the bottom of disposable underwear. Baby diapers are bought by loving mothers who want nothing but the best for the babies. Adult briefs are bought by capitalistic nursing home administrators who want nothing but the best for their bottom line.
As for inventions, I'm envisioning a combination of a narrow bowl or jar-shaped contraption that is also covered in baby-diaper-materials. The soft poofy diaper material could be pressed securely against the sensitive genital area without causing discomfort (unlike a hard plastic edge) and would catch any drips that are attempting to travel up the gluteal cleft.It would be a disposable / one-time-use device (unless the neck area was detachable/disposable and the bowl/jar part was reuseable) and so cost would be an issue, but when you factor in the cost of extra staffing (for two-person rolling) and extra chux pads and extra laundering costs, it might be a wash financially.
We need a way to get volumes for my I&O obsessed unit. Weights? Color changing with each color being a 100 ml increment?
We need a way to get volumes for my I&O obsessed unit. Weights? Color changing with each color being a 100 ml increment?
Weighing seems like a pretty easy way to go about it. You know the starting weight, subtract that from the post-urination weight, convert weight to volume. That's going to be a lot more exact than guesstimating how much got spilled/leaked down the legs, up the back, and all over the sheets!
I don't know if even a babies diaper put between ones legs will catch all the urine. One a babies stream and volume is a lot smaller then an adults.
And as a mother how many times in the middle of the night have I come to my babies crib to see they were laying on their backs and the whole backside of their PJs and the sheets are soaked because the pee or explosive poo went up their backs
We need a way to get volumes for my I&O obsessed unit. Weights? Color changing with each color being a 100 ml increment?
A lot (if not all?) of Peds units will weigh diapers in order to monitor I&O. Seems like a pretty simple way to just transition over into an adult setting.
(And before I get berated for using the word "diaper", I obviously mean it in terms of babies and toddlers. I use the word "brief" in terms of adult incontinence products.)
I find bedpans to be more mess than they catch. The patient's bottom is almost always wet, and if we're using a bedpan then usually they don't have the strength to stay "lifted up" for both the pan removal and drying/cleaning. And that's *IF* all of the urine actually stayed in the pan. More often than not I have to put a towel so the urine doesn't spray "up", and leakage to the sacral area usually ends up being a pool that missed the urinal.
I agree a better option needs to be available, and I appreciate the OP's query. The product someone linked to at Amazon looks promising, I wonder if it's been used in a hospital setting at all?
Also, addressing the side note... 25 years ago in EMS, they gave us those "emesis basins" ... you know, the kidney shaped ones that function as no more than a deflector. Even the wash basins are messy for emesis. In our ER we use something that looks like an airsick bag, and I think those are a THOUSAND times better. Wish I had a sleeve of them at home for when we get the stomach bug or food poisoning.
mvm2
1,001 Posts
I hope people do not see my post on this subject as being harsh because it is not meant to be so.
I am just passionate about this being a CNA and seeing it and having issues with it myself I know how supposedly good these products are and how many times they fail and the embarrassment of it