Orange – our colour for more safety and support in emergencies
Stiegelmeyer standardises the control elements of its hospital beds
"Pastel orange" is the official name of the RAL 2003 colour, but this colour is by no means pastel in the sense of being pale. It stands out brightly and cannot be overlooked in daylight or artificial light. This makes RAL 2003 ideal for its role as a signal colour. In future, the colour will be used as a consistent concept on hospital beds and other Stiegelmeyer products to identify all elements that need to be found within seconds in medical emergencies or that represent important functions – from CPR levers to the release mechanisms for removable head or footboards.
The new standardisation is a response to one of the few points of criticism in the large independent bed study conducted by the German Employers' Liability Insurance Association for Health and Welfare (BGW). The three Stiegelmeyer models tested, Evario, Puro and Seta pro, received good to very good marks from specialists. However, it was noted that "unlocking mechanisms are difficult to find".
Tabea Lanzke, Marketing Product Manager for the Hospital division, explains: "Regular feedback from our customers and dialogue with them are very important to us and show us the way to making our products even more user-friendly and safe in daily practice. The BGW study was a welcome opportunity to reassess, evaluate and improve the design of key elements on our beds."
The new concept can be seen on all bed models such as Puro, Evario, Sicuro tera and Evario one at the Stiegelmeyer showroom in Herford. It has also applied to all deliveries of new hospital beds for some time now.
The orange signal colour identifies, for example, the buttons for the CPR and Trendelenbug positions on the locking boxes and modules at the foot end and on the integrated control panels in the safety sides. The orange CPR lever under the backrest cannot be overlooked, nor can the releases of the removable head or footboards.
The orange elements on the removable head and footboards in particular also remind the user to secure them again after putting them back in place. This was another point of the BGW study. "Stiegelmeyer's quick response shows that we can realise customer requests promptly with high quality and little effort," explains Tabea Lanzke. "After almost 125 years of history, our company remains flexible and creative. We are also committed to tackling the current challenges in healthcare and offering significantly better solutions in dialogue with clinical users."
This claim is also reflected in the new Evario one modular hospital bed, which has been specially developed for different international markets and can be configured to meet specific requirements. The concept of "colour for more safety and support" plays a special role in the context of intercultural users and multilingual regions.
Here, too, the colour orange is not only used for the manual CPR lever and the release mechanism of the removable head and footboard, but also identifies the Trendelenburg buttons and the electric CPR buttons on the handset and the nurse control, for example.
The visual standardisation of the emergency elements is also a step towards a more comprehensive product design language. Beds and furniture from the Stiegelmeyer Group should have an individual appearance – but at the same time we are striving for ever greater uniformity at the level of operation, which immediately gives all users a feeling of familiarity.
In doing so, we are following our motto: "Solutions for people who care".