Equipment

After two years of searching for an ideal chair to install in their blood donor mobiles, the Red Cross finally found the perfect solution in the Belmont Pro II dental chair. "We'd been looking for a long time to find the perfect chair" said Mick Mahady, Projects and Facilities Manager for the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. "We looked at chairs from a wide range of suppliers including both dental and other types of chair. The Belmont Pro II units were perfect because of their quality and small footprint which enables us to keep the limited space in the donor mobiles as limited space. When it is not being used, it takes up no more space than the footprint, which is ideal. In addition, their manoeuvrability is fantastic. You can turn it in any direction and if we need to defibrillate someone, we can easily spin the chair around to provide rapid access. The supine position is also like a supine, It goes all the way back. Mr Mahady said that the Red Cross had so far equipped four donor mobiles with four Belmont Pro II Chairs each and a fifth was due of the production line in a couple of weeks. The custom built mobile blood collection units are a semi trailer sized caravan fitted out for blood collection. "As far as the donor mobiles go with the Belmont Chairs in them, we have one in Newcastle, one in Queensland, two in Victoria and the next one is going to Orange in NSW" he said. "The older vehicles use benches rather than chairs. The new system makes it easier for donors to get into and out of the rest position and functionally they make it much easier to draw blood from the patients.