By ICU Clinicians: Patent-pending device to reduce ICU nursing staff workload in managing patients coming off ventilation focussed on reducing lifting and transmission risk

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**Context**: Due to COVID-19 each ICU nurse is now looking after at least 3 patients when they are taken off a ventilator, rather than the pre-COVID-19 recommended maximum of 1 nurse for every 2 patients.The attrition of nurses due to being exposed to COVID-19 (i.e. less nurses available) along with increased workload resulting from more cases, creates a need to use new working methods/technologies to reduce nursing workload.**Vision: To develop a simple mechanical device to ensure patients remain in the best position to optimize the mechanics of their breathing (ventilation) and hence oxygenation, improving patient outcomes while reducing the need for nurses to physically move patients.**This is important as in an ICU many of the patients will need reposition at least once per day, resulting in clinical staff repositioning patients typically 12 times per day across the patients they care for. Reducing the need to reposition patients reduces the physical stress from repeated lifting (a major cause of injury to nursing staff) and reduces direct patient contact (important in reducing transmission risk).**Objective:** To complete development of a device for trial in a National Health Service ('NHS') Intensive Care Unit (ICU) that will **maintain patients in the optimal breathing position for oxygenation and workload when they are 'extubated'** (i.e. come-off artificial ventilation) and reduce nursing workload and the risk of transmission.**Focus**: When patients are extubated they are frequently extremely weak due to a combination of factors (illness, injury and the drugs used in their treatment). To improve the mechanics of breathing, they are sat up in their ICU beds which bend in the middle to facilitate a reclined upright position. Often however, due to their loss of muscle strength, the patients are unable to maintain this position and slide down the bed. This can then compromise their breathing and cause their oxygen saturation to drop.In an ICU or High-Dependency Unit (HDU) one often hears the blood oxygen saturation meters alarming. Ordinarily one of the nursing team will assess the patient and, in many cases, all that is required to restore satisfactory oxygenation is to reposition the patient to restore the optimal position for efficient ventilation which typically takes 2 nurses 5 minutes each.**Focus: Reduce/eliminate the need to reposition patients in order to reduce nurse workload.**