Toileting Bariatric Patients

[Toileting Help]

What are some of your challenges when toileting bariatric (obese) patients?

[Bubbles]

Our hospital also has special bariatric rooms where the toilets are mounted to the floor rather than the walls. I guess there have been issues with wall mounted toilets not staying mounted.

This was not a hospital situation, but a private employer - one of the very heavy employees had the experience of the wall mounted toilet ripping out of the wall when they used it.

[6mostogo]

The hospital in our area is newly remodeled and and each unit has specially designed Bariatric room. Lift built right above the bed on a track; it can move the pt right into the shower or the toilet. THe toilets are mounted to the floor with a nice large base and no inconveniently placed handrails. The HR department proudly toured our clinical group and gushed over the design of these rooms. However, no one must have consulted a during the design process... the toilet paper holder, while it would be appropriately placed in a standard bathroom, is mounted in such a way that is too low for a bari pt to reach, and would cause a large scrape if said pt were to be lower onto the seat from above via the lift. At the very least, it would be uncomfortably poking the side of pts leg.

[teeniebert, LPN]

I had an obese pt who used the bedpan exclusively. Whenever she got on the pan, she'd grab her cheeks and spread them out of the way. Good idea, but after several weeks of this the skin in her gluteal cleft started splitting open...and she kept right on spreading!

[gentlegiver, ASN, LPN, RN]

I had an obese pt who used the bedpan exclusively. Whenever she got on the pan, she'd grab her cheeks and spread them out of the way. Good idea, but after several weeks of this the skin in her gluteal cleft started splitting open...and she kept right on spreading!

OUCH!!!!!!!!!!! As a CNA we had a lovely lady who had major problems with hygene, when trying to washer peri area our gloves would often slip off and get stuck down there. We solved that problem when one of the CNA's baught her a long handled scrubber. Once she got used to it, she used it for washing all those hard to reach places. Saved her from breakdown & the embarassing search for lost gloves.