Hospital bed
AssigneeStryker Corporation
InventorsGuy Lemire, Luc Petitpas, Sébastien Lessard
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A patient bed includes a patient support, a base, and an electrical control system. The patient support is mounted relative to said base, which has a plurality of bearing members for moving the base and the patient support across a surface. Each of the bearing members includes a brake operatively associated therewith, with the electrical control system having a user actuatable device and being configured to actuate one or more of the brakes upon actuation of the user actuatable device.
Claims16
A method of actuating a brake on a caster wheel of a patient support apparatus to stop motion of the apparatus, the patient support apparatus including a support frame and a plurality of caster wheels supporting the frame, a patient support surface supported by the support frame, and at least one manually operable brake for manually braking the caster wheels, the patient support apparatus further including an actuator for selectively outputting a driving force and a control system, said method comprising:
- electrically coupling the control system to the actuator;
- generating actuating signals with said control system based on input from a user;
- transmitting the actuating signals to the actuator to thereby actuate the actuator to output a driving force;
- and
- mechanically coupling the driving force of the actuator with the manually operable brake to thereby actuate the manually operable brake and thereby brake the caster wheels.
A method of actuating a brake for a caster wheel on a patient support apparatus, the patient support apparatus including a patient support surface, a frame supporting the patient support surface, the frame including a plurality of caster wheels, the patient support apparatus further including a headboard, a footboard, siderails, and a manual brake operatively associated with the patient support apparatus for braking one or more of the caster wheels, and an actuator, said method comprising:
- providing a user actuatable device at or near the headboard, footboard, or siderails;
- generating an activation signal based on user input to the user actuatable device;
- powering the actuator to generate an actuation force in response to the activation signal;
- and
- transmitting the actuation force from the actuator to the manual brake to thereby brake the at least one or more caster wheels.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.