Flossmoor firefighter/paramedic Tom Slayton demonstrates the Stryker lift unit. That greenish light shows where the arm on the device is located. (Photo by Tom Houlihan/H-F Chronicle)
Emergency response can be backbreaking work.
Until recently, there was only one way to move a patient, on a cot, into an ambulance — the two-man lift. For generations of firefighters and paramedics, back problems were often the cost of regularly hoisting adult patients into emergency vehicles.
“The incidence of back injuries was . . .