Something Old, Something New, Something Black and Blue

By Michael Harvey, FF/Paramedic, RN

Co-Founder, Emergency Medical Resolutions Inc.

Frequent flyers... Every service has them and for us, they all happen to be geriatric.

Day in and day out, the call is the same: lift assist. Ground level fall with no obvious injury.

The classic: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

Something old, something new, something black and blue.

The old is the patient. Seventy, eighty, ninety years old, skin like tissue paper, and stubbornly independent.

The old is also the way we have always lifted them.

Post a foot, get under an arm and twist while lifting. The whole time hoping Wilma can bear weight this time.

Repeat. Year after year, for a whole career.

The black and blue are the bruises on fragile hips, forearms, and shins from falling over and over again. The heads bandaged from the last time. The wound that the blood thinner never quite let heal.

But there is another bruise that does not show up on the patient. The repeated micro strain to our lumbar spines. The shoulders that don’t extend like they used to. The knee that clicks whenever stepping into the rig.

The cumulative load of lifting the same way simply because that is how it has always been done, or so you think.

As I have moved deeper into injury prevention, those lift assists started looking different. What once felt routine started feeling unnecessary. Risky even.

Mechanical lift devices exist, but not every department has one and not every truck carries one.

Still, every rig, every firefighter carries webbing. Black webbing sitting in a compartment or bunker pant pocket hardly ever used.

So I experimented: One loop between the legs. Two loops

pulled through the center. One in each hand with instant handles.

There's no awkward underarm reach. No twisting under load. Just a smooth controlled vertical lift. At first there were glances. Inherent skepticism to change.

Then they saw it. Just how easily the patient popped right up. How fast it was and how much less strain it placed on the body.

The lift assists are not going away. The elderly population is not shrinking any time soon. The calls will keep coming, but routine doesn’t have to mean thoughtless repetition.

Sometimes innovation isn’t about buying something new.

Sometimes it’s about having something old and using it in a new way.