Minstrel Patient Lift
The advent of patient lifts in hospitals and nursing homes has made the transportation of patients from one spot to another much easier. Lifts have provided ease to families with bedridden family members who could not get from one place to another without being carried. However, there are certain patient lifts available in the market that have caused grave danger to the patients placed on them. Many patients have incurred serious injuries because of falling incidents that they experienced from being transported in defective patient lifts.
In line with this, Arjo, Inc., makers of the Minstrel Patient Lifts, sent out an advisory that stated its voluntary Class I recall of two models of the lifts on the market. The models are both with and without scales, and are found to have problems in their mechanical setup, which could cause serious injuries to patient users.
A Class I recall is considered as the highest form of recall that could be taken by any company. This kind of recall is distinguished by the FDA as an event wherein the use of the product poses a high probability of the affliction of dire health effects, including death. The Minstrel Patient Lifts recall mostly affected 116 units that had hanger bars, which detached from the lifts because of the migration or breakage of their pins in the hanger bar.
The Minstrel Patient Lift is a device that is powered by a battery. There are two primary mechanical problems in these lifts that caused it to be recalled. First is the problem regarding the detachment of the hanger bar from the patient lift, which causes a patient to fall. This hanger bar detachment was found to have been caused by a missing spring washer in its assembly. Second, there may be loosening of a bolt in the foot pedal. The bolt loosening causes the assembly of the foot pedal to slip off the patient lift, which results in the instability of the device. Thus instability poses another probability for the patient placed in the lift to fall.
There is a great possibility that you or a loved one might have suffered from injuries caused by a Minstrel Patient Lift that had one or both of the mechanical problems found among its recalled units. If this is so, it is best to contact a defective medical device lawyer now. Your lawyer should be qualified and knowledgeable in answering all the possible questions that you could ask regarding the product that caused your injury. He should also be compassionate enough to fight for your case until you get the retribution that you deserve, even if it takes years to conclude. Your lawyer should also be the one who will carry your voice to the company that was responsible in the manufacture of the defective product that caused your injuries.
As a user of the potentially dangerous Minstrel Patient Lift, you are entitled to file a personal injury claim against Arjo, Inc., with the help of your lawyer. This claim, once won, will provide you with the just compensation that will reimburse all the medical expenses incurred when you were afflicted with injuries as a result of your fall, and make up for the pain and suffering that you and your family went through.
It is important that you contact a lawyer as soon as you incur those injuries, because there are statutes of limitation in every state that restrict you from filing a personal injury case after a given period of time. Most states in the U.S. usually adopt the two-year statute of limitation, that only allows a victim to file a personal injury claim against a company that manufactured a defective product within two years of injuries. Filing your case as soon as possible will get you the compensation that you deserve.
