ABOUT YANKADDY®
The Yankaddy® features a reusable holster and bracket with a disposable lid/liner, designed to retain the Yankauer suction instrument and prevent any undesired movement of the Yankauer. The Yankaddy® brackets, make it easy to attach the holster on multiple places such as bedrails, counters, walls, and IV poles so that it is always where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. Until now, there has not been a place to store the Yankauer suction instrument before and during its use in a medical procedure. In current practice, without the Yankaddy®, the Yankauer gets placed under a mattress or pillow, on top of equipment and on counters, and frequently falls to the floor. The Yankaddy® offers a reliable place to store the Yankauer suction instrument thereby keeping the environment from becoming contaminated and spreading healthcare-associated infections. The Yankaddy® was designed to be used with one hand, adding safety to patients and convenience to medical providers.
FOUNDER & DESIGNER - Kristi Myers MSN CRNA
The inventor and maker of the Yankaddy®, started her career 25 years ago as an emergency room nurse in a level 1 trauma center. While taking care of patients who were vomiting and bleeding and using the Yankauer suction instrument to clean up the bodily fluids, she quickly realized that there was a need for a designated holster to retain the contaminated Yankauer. At that time, and up until now, common places to put the contaminated Yankauer were under the patient's pillow or mattress or draped across medical equipment. Often it fell to the floor only to be picked up and urgently used again!
Time passed and her nursing career grew as she received her Master's degree in nursing and became a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA). Working as a CRNA, she continued to see this problem of environmental contamination caused specifically by the Yankauer. She has now been a traveling CRNA for 16 years, working in over 30 cities across the country, and has never seen a product in use for the Yankauer to be stored in. As she became more aware of HAIs and the implications they have on her patients as well as the financial impact they have on the healthcare system, she felt a strong desire to come up with a solution with this common problem with the Yankauer. Common sense would indicate that the Yankauer is a known cause of environmental spread of infections but there are also countless studies that have proven it is a culprit of HAIs.
Being a medical provider herself, she knew it was extremely important to make a product that is convenient and easy to use. Her patent pending Yankaddy® allows the medical provider to use the Yankauer suction instrument with one hand which adds a safety component for the patient because the provider can keep their eyes on the patient while having the Yankauer always at their fingertips. It is very easy to move and attach to most surfaces like IV poles, bed rails, and countertops, whether horizontally or vertically. It can be used in hospitals, surgery centers, and ambulances in most medical settings such as operating rooms, emergency rooms, patient rooms, intensive care units, procedure rooms, recovery rooms, long term care, and hospice care centers.
After more than 5 years of diligently working toward the goal of coming up with a solution to help reduce HAIs caused by the Yankauer, the Yankaddy® was been developed and is now being manufactured right here in the USA.
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