The need for Hospices to be able to offer cost effective, space efficient and comfortable overnight facilities for visitors is just as pressing as that for Hospitals.
Patients approaching the end of their lives derive an enormous amount of comfort from being able to have a partner, family member, close friend, or carer stay with them in a Hospice, as do their close family and friends and the criteria are exactly the same as for Hospitals.
By accommodating Visitors on a bed which can be located right next to the patient’s bed and folded up, or away in the morning, without the loss of valuable day-time Ward space, or disrupting nursing routines, the requirement to provide separate rooms for visitors is completely eliminated and Hospice patients and Visitors prefer to sleep close to one another, anyway, rather than in separate rooms.
Our award winning, high performance ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Visitor Guestbeds and ‘WISKAWAY’® Visitor Wallbeds are routinely used for this purpose in Hospices up and down the country.
In 2007 we were approached by the Marie Curie Hospice group who were looking for a guest bed on which the sleeping height could be the same as that of a Hospital bed (on a low setting), so that patients and visitors could sleep side-by-side and at the same level.
Whilst most guest beds are quite low off the ground, when deployed, our standard ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Visitor Guestbed, with a sleeping height of 47cms, is higher than most, but Marie Curie were looking for something higher still.
As we manufacture our beds individually for each project, we are able to be very flexible about special customer requirements, even on smaller quantities, so producing a ‘GLIDEAWAY’® with extra-long legs was not a problem and, in order to make the very best possible use of the space underneath, we added a simple, useful, steel bedding tray, between the four legs. The result was our extra-high XH ‘GLIDEAWAY’® model with integral bedding tray (see picture below), which is now a popular member of our ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Visitor Guestbed ‘family’.
In addition, the Hospice wanted to be able to store these beds away in a cabinet, when not in use, so we designed a simple flat-packed, self-assembly housing (see pictures below). Our customers often have special requirements and, to date, we have always been able to fulfil these.
Hospices rely to significant extent on Charitable funds and the fact that our award winning, high performance, visitor beds have such impressively long working lives, come with a 10 year bedframe guarantee and are such good value for money, makes them an ideal choice.
