In 2011, Dr Rafael Squitieri, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at St. Vincent’s Medical Centre, was inspired to transform critical care based on an unforgettable experience with a young patient who underwent successful open heart surgery, but later suffered complications after the procedure from a sacral pressure injury. It was this experience that led to the founding of TurnCare, an outstanding company that utilizes innovative technology to provide better care flexibility for critical care clinicians. Discover more about TurnCare and its award-winning Guardian System, as we profile the firm.
2011 saw Dr Squitieri team up with serial entrepreneur and expert software leader Kim Orumchian to found a company that utilized innovative technology to provide better care and better flexibility for critical care clinicians. Out of their combined vision and the formulation of TurnCare, Dr Squitieri and Kim created the Guardian II system, which is designed to promote healthy blood flow where the majority of pressure injuries occur and provide an alternative to turning patients that are unable to be frequently repositioned. To date, Dr. Squitieri has helped thousands of patients using this radically different approach, which has resulted in enhanced care, improved patient management, and a superior clinician experience. TurnCare’s purpose is to replicate these results for patients and clinicians everywhere and change the way that medical facilities treat the most complex critical care patients forever.
The most game-changing element of TurnCare is its award-winning Guardian System II, which is an anatomy-specific, multi-surface patient support system that deploys a unique pressure algorithm that is able to customize individualized therapy to maintain health blood flow during ventilation. Guardian II is clinically designed to give clinicians the option to reduce turning frequencies in complex critical care patients while lowering adverse events and allowing staff to focus on competing critical life-saving tasks. The system also leverages VasoTactic TM technology, which was created to provide precise pressure gradient therapy to maintain good blood flow in the sacral region. This unique approach helps to prevent sacral vascular compression and a myriad of associated local and systemic health benefits.
Unlike traditional pressure-redistribution surfaces which repeatedly apply pressure across large surface areas of the body without regard for human anatomy and physiology, the Guardian System II understands where, how much, and how long to apply pressure so that blood flow is consistently maintained. TurnCare’s Guardian System II is easily added to various patient surfaces and has automated capabilities that facilitate alerts, notifications, and patient support without caregiver intervention.
In TurnCare’s pivotal trial, which was later published in the Journal of Wound Ostomy and Continence, the Guardian System II exceeded expectations by demonstrating seriously impressive outcomes. This included an 81% reduction in sacral hospital-acquired pressure injuries with high-risk acute care inpatients versus existing alternating pressure air bed therapy, as well as a 60% faster time to the complete healing of Stage 2 pressure injuries in long-term care patients and a 57% reduction in length of stay for stroke and acute kidney injury patients.
Guardian System II has also been deployed in the fight against COVID-19. To meet the rising clinical demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, the innovative product was utilized as a widespread intervention throughout multiple existing and newly constructed COVID-19 Intensive Care Units (ICUs) on an increased number of highly contagious, critically ill ventilated patients. Guardian Systems were both pre-deployed on ICU beds and placed on patients as soon as possible in COVID-19 units allowing for immediate pressure injury prevention therapy upon admission, reducing clinical effort, risk, and care team exposure.
Despite reduced turning schedules due to drastic staffing challenges and high ICU census, the Guardian System II still showed benefits in preventing skin breakdown in complex, critically ill COVID-19 isolation patients. The additional time not required, or prevented due to instability, for patient turning was allocated towards prioritizing more critical lifesaving tasks. The Guardian System II showed effective potential in supporting the repurposing of staff for critical care, maximizing patient and staff safety, and minimizing transmission risk to caregivers and other patients. Ultimately, TurnCare is an outstanding innovation, one that has come along at exactly the right moment to prove vital in the fight against COVID-19. As the future months continue to pit humanity against the virus, there can be no doubt that TurnCare’s Guardian System II will remain an exceptional bit of technological innovation.
For more information, please contact Erica Kelly or visit: www.turncare.com
