Ventilator and care cart each capable of nesting within and docking with a hospital bed base

DETAILED DESCRIPTION In accordance with the principles of this invention, a significant improvement in patient critical care and movement is made by consolidating the patient ventilator required in a typical critical care environment not only for its stationary use but also for transportation purposes as well.
That is, rather than rolling the patient ventilator along with the patient bed from one room to the next, the present invention enables a hospital worker to roll, as a single unit, both the bed and the ventilator as a single, integrated critical care unit.
The typical critical care bed is manufactured to certain external dimensions to enable the bed to be rolled, for example, through doorways, down aisles, and into elevators.
The external dimensions of the bed are referred to as the bed's "footprint".
Hospital workers are familiar with maneuvering such a standard critical care bed within this footprint.
The present invention combines movement of the ventilator with the critical care bed within this footprint in such a manner that the outer dimensions of the critical care bed are not exceeded, thereby taking advantage of the fact that the bed has been designed to freely travel down aisles, through doors and the like, and of the familiarity of the hospital worker with maneuvering the critical care bed.
The patient ventilator which normally stands in a position next to the bed is in accordance with this invention capable of being quickly and efficiently locked within the patient bed base and within the bed footprint for rolling movement with the bed from one location to another.
Since the ventilator must be disconnected from its source of AC power at the hospital room wall before transferring it to a new room, this invention provides for powering the ventilator directly by the bed itself.
This eliminates any down time of the ventilator thereby providing for uninterrupted operation of the ventilator during movement of the patient and patient bed.
The present invention provides a hospital bed supported on a wheeled base, and a ventilator supported on a wheeled cart which may be docked to the base of the bed, the combination of ventilator and bed capable of being rolled as a single unit within the bed footprint