IHEEM HISTORY AND HERITAGE
services necessary for its commissioning.” Noting that, by the early 1970s – with the needs of disabled people having become ‘an automatic consideration when designing public buildings’ – manufacturers had generally modified and extended their ranges accordingly, Amos Millington looks back to a previous era when ‘the ‘range of such specialist equipment was limited’.
For instance, he recalls, in his own ‘area’, ‘protracted discussions’ on how best to cater for the bathing of geriatric patients in a new 28-bedded Geriatric Ward being built at the Ladywell Hospital in Salford. He explained: “Bathing of such patients using conventional methods had always been a difficult and arduous task for staff, because of the strain on nursing staff, and fears and discomfort of patients due to lifting etc.”
‘Novel methods’’ rejected Several ‘novel methods’ from different manufacturers having been rejected, due either to them ‘involving complicated equipment;’ or being expected to be too costly, he and his Engineering team successfully bid to the ‘region’ for an allocation to finance the design and fabrication of a purpose-built bath. He explained some of the subsequent steps in developing a suitable ‘solution’: “The height of an average chair seat proved to be ideal for nurses to execute long bathing sessions, and, with this in mind, I prepared a drawing depicting an almost conventional bath, but with a door at one end and the whole assembly mounted on a frame so as to attain a bath bottom height of 500 mm. Using a standard tubular frame sanitary chair as a model, a sketch was made detailing a chair which would transport the patient from the bed/ward to the bathroom, and then, at the bath, the chair’s seat and backrest would separate from its base and transfer the patient into the bath, still seated.
“After closing the bath door, water could be admitted at the correct temperature for bathing. To ‘prove’ the design, a company specialising in the manufacture of hospital furniture cooperated and built a prototype of the special chair. By coincidence, an adjacent factory to this company boasted a plastics division, and it produced the bath shell from resin-bonded glass fibre.”
Important details
Amos Millington added that ‘important details’, such as the door seal, ‘easily operated door catches’, and ‘other safety features,’ were decided upon, and the bath and chair to be delivered to the hospital built. He explained: “The temperature of the water was thermostatically controlled through a locked mixing valve, and a quick response
August 2018 Health Estate Journal 41
motorised valve was installed after the mixing valve to interrupt the water to the bath should it rise above a safe limit. As the bath needed to be drained before the patient could be removed through the door, a larger than normal waste was incorporated.”
The part of the chair to be partially immersed in the bath water was treated with a silicone-based varnish to minimise water carry-over when withdrawn from the bath. The bath proved successful, being adopted by the hospital furniture manufacturer as standard within its range, and dubbed ‘The Ladywell Bath’, after the location of its invention.
‘Pros’ and ‘cons’
Amos Millington said of the finished bathing system: “Because the patient was held clear of the bottom, and the chair afforded virtually total body surface access, proper bathing could be effected by the nursing staff, who in turn benefited from the ergonomic considerations built into the design. A disadvantage that has revealed itself
over the years is that some patients feel uncomfortable at having to remain in the bath while the water is allowed to drain.” Amos Millington also recalls how, in 1972/1973, a Geriatric Assessment Unit was built at Ladywell Hospital, designed to assess the condition of patients who could be medically discharged from the hospital, but would, in their own environment, either have to care for themselves, or could only expect limited help from their ‘ageing and perhaps infirm’ spouse. Part of the unit included a training area, where patients ‘became familiar once more with the normal household activities of cooking, washing, and ironing etc’. “However,” he explained in the same article, “for some patients the normal height of fixed domestic appliances was unsuitable, and specialist equipment was asked for, whereby assessment could be made by the staff as to what alterations may be necessary at the patient’s home to ensure that worktops, cookers, sinks etc., were at a height to suit the partially disabled person.”
A three-flue chimney at Salford Royal Hospital, circa 1979, designed by Amos Millington to replace an old brick chimney. The chimney served two steam boilers and one incinerator; it was taken down after the hospital closed and the site was developed into apartments.
©Amos Millington
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