The Royal Canadian Legion Branch #105 in Olds has donated several pieces of equipment to the Olds Hospital and Care Centre from the legion's poppy funds.
They donated a vital signs tree and two portable suction machines to the long-term care unit and a bariatric chair to the dialysis unit.
Legion officials are grateful for the generosity of local residents who have given donations to the poppy fund and thus, made those donations possible.
Poppy Fund Chair Leslie Mamchur says the local legion branch will be making more donations in the future. They're just waiting for approval from legion authorities before obtaining one more bariatric chair, for example.
Mamchur says while obtained with an eye to helping veterans, the equipment is also available for the public as a whole.
The bariatric chair is specially designed for larger patients.
Charge nurse Susan Tobias says it has many advantages over other ones in the hospital's dialysis unit. She notes various aspects of it can be manipulated with the push of a button.
"The other ones are sort of manual and we have to push the patient up. But this one is all electronic, so (we can) put their legs up and put them back without us doing anything," she says. "And then when they're bigger, it can make a difference."
Tobias says another advantage of the new chair is that its sides can be tilted outward, making it easier to move a patient onto a stretcher if they have to be moved to the emergency room.
"(It's) very nice for patients -- more comfy. And more sturdy than these (other) ones are, for sure," Tobias says.
Tobias says it also looks exactly like the other chairs, and that's important psychologically for larger patients, who, she says, don't want to feel they're being treated differently than others.
