How to prevent serious incidents when using hoist scales

By Phil Cotton Service Engineer Hcsuk Servicing 

Last week I received an emergency call out to a serious incident where a care home resident situated in a hoisting sling attached to a portable set of hoist scales, had fallen to the floor after the hoist had toppled over due to an imbalance of weight placed upon it.

Thankfully for the resident, their family, the carers and care provider, there were no significant injury sustained on this occasion. However, I felt so strongly about this ‘near miss’ accident that I  wanted to write a blog to explain HOW this happened, in the hope of preventing this simple and very solvable situation happening elsewhere and causing more accidents which could include fractured limbs, hospitalisation or even death. 

For more information on how to create safer care environments why not download our FREE servicing guide here. When I attended the home and inspected the hoist spreader bar, one of the end hooks, (pictured below on the left) was badly bent out of shape, and out of line with the end of the spreader bar tube end, which I concluded, could only have happened using extensive force and leverage.

What had caused the hook to bend to that extent on one side of the spreader bar was the fact that the swivel eyes, (pictured below between the carabiner clip and the.)  were being used to attach the scales to the spreader bar hooks.  

On one side of the hoist scale, the swivel eye had not been fully hooked on to the flat bottom part of the hook, resulting in it being wedged onto the top open end of the hook, and with the swivel eye being so much smaller in diameter than the carabiner, and having a flat section at the bottom,

the eye had actually wedged onto the end of the spreader bar tube. 

Also due care was not taken to ensure that the swivel eye was fitted in the same place as on the other end of the bar and down to the flat lower section of the hook.

Once the weight of the resident situated in the sling was added to the equation and the lifting task began, the swivel eye position acted as a leverage point on the tube end of the spreader bar, causing the hook of the bar end to bend and resulting in the hoist toppling over due to the sudden weight transfer imbalance.

The above picture clearly shows that the swivel eyes which the carabiner clips attach to are considerably smaller than the clips themselves, so in the light of this recent occurrence, I felt it was  part of my duty as a conscientious service engineer to highlight to all care home owners, managers and care staff alike that these carabiner clips MUST NOT be removed from the attachment end of the chains on any portable types of hoist scales in use around care homes.

I urge you all to do a spot check, TODAY, on every set of hoist scales in your care home to ensure that the carabiner clips are fitted correctly to the scales. Should you find that they are not there, firstly try to locate them and get them refitted to the chains , and if not get them replaced as soon as possible to avoid potentially serious accidents from happening in your care home.

Also, highlight to all of your care staff through periodic training sessions that these carabiner clips must never be removed from the portable hoist scales when the time comes for routine resident weight checks.

We’ve included a link for a short demonstration of how to fit a set of hoist scales correctly to a hoist spreader bar here.

The spreader bar in question has been condemned, the home manager and general manager have both been fully briefed on the situation and replacement parts ordered by the home.

For more information on how to create safer care environments why not download our FREE servicing guide here.