“Happy Hair Mobile” for Hair Shampooing of Patients in Phangnga Hospital, Phangnga Province, Thailand

Abstract

Hair shampooing of bedridden or immobile patients is an important procedure to provide hygienic care. The traditional process is quite complicated and usually time consuming. The objective of this invention was to create a mobile hair shampooing device for patients, “the Happy Hair Mobile”, aiming to simplify the shampooing process in order to increase satisfaction of patients and healthcare providers. The music player was installed in the Happy Hair Mobile to make patients relaxed. A study was conducted to compare the performance and the satisfaction between the traditional shampooing process and the Happy Hair Mobile. The data was collected from 30 patients and 18 healthcare providers in the ICU of Pangnga Hospital between September 2014 – April 2015. A set of questionnaire was used to assess satisfaction, and the efficiency of the Happy Hair Mobile was measured by recording the time duration and water consumption; and data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. It was found that: (1) the mean time and water consumption of the Happy Hair Mobile were significantly lower than those of the traditional process (p<0.05); and (2) the satisfaction of the Happy Hair Mobile on comfort, cleanliness and safety were significantly greater than the traditional process (with Z–scores of -4.595, -4.685 and -4.533 respectively for patients’ satisfaction and -3.552, -3.443 and -3.667 respectively for healthcare providers’ satisfaction (p<0.05). Recommendations from this study were to reduce the cost through changing material specifications in order to increase the production and to improve the pillow to make it more adjustable.