The World Health Organization estimates that some 40 percent of patients experience harm in ambulatory and primary care settings, with an estimated 80 percent of these harms being preventable. This Patient Safety Awareness Week, we join the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in shedding light on this important topic.
To echo IHI: “Preventing harm in health care settings is a public health concern. Everyone interacts with the health care system at some point in life. And everyone has a role to play in advancing safe health care.” Stance takes seriously our role in supporting a safer healthcare experience for the patients, care providers, and visitors we ultimately serve through our products.
Furniture is extremely influential in determining the safety of a healthcare experience. Our commitment to Improving Lives by Design includes a relentless dedication to safety in both our products and our culture. This focus is reflected in both the ways in which we ensure a safe manufacturing environment for our Stance team members, and in the over-engineered, intuitively designed products we produce.
No matter the application, all of Stance’s products are built to last in high-use environments, with features that anticipate potential hazards and risks common in healthcare delivery. Below are a few examples of Stance’s signature features and products that support a safe experience for patients and care providers.
Cleanability
Often, subtle design elements like open seams and corners, thick-woven fabrics, insecure caps or surfaces with porous grooves be sneaky culprits of infection exposure. Our furniture prioritizes safety through cleanability.
- Stance’s easy-clean seating collections, such as Abrazo with its generous cleanout space, and Rochester with its 3-way cleanout space, guard against healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs).
- In a healthcare environment, surface areas like table tops and arm caps are a critical design aspect of a given space. Our selection of Corian® solid surface finishes are also natural infection fighters. This material is the original solid surface offering in the marketplace and remains the go-to solid surface selection for healthcare furniture, and for good reasons: Corian® Solid Surface is a virtually maintenance-free finish selection that is highly customizable, easy-to-clean and withstands the test of time.
- Our fabrics offer a variety of custom coatings which guard against infection, including: moisture barrier, bleach-cleanable, and antimicrobial coatings. Browse our latest collection of healthcare-certified coated (and beautiful!) fabrics we released with CF Stinson here.
Behavioral Health-grade Durability
It’s no secret that Stance, known for our leadership in Behavioral Health furniture, makes products that last. This quality not only makes Stance products a smart, long-term investment for healthcare facilities – it is an investment in the safety of care providers and patients.
- Stance Behavioral Health products anticipate possible physical risks commonly experienced by patients in BH therapy. That means every rounded corner, weighted base, and tamper-resistant fastener on our BH furniture is a means of protecting the end-user against self-harm – as well as the care providers supporting them. Learn more in our overview on how our BH furniture is uniquely engineered for healthcare environments.
- Our award-winning products, including Flo Table and Chair collection and the Frontier Bed, are regarded for their unwavering safety aspects while supporting a humane care experience through unexpected comfort and attractive aesthetics.
We hope you will join us in spreading awareness about patient safety, and continue following Stance for more insights and new products that prioritize safety in any healthcare environment.
