Medical Sewing
Medical sewing refers to any industrial sewing process that produces sewn, stitched, fabricated, or otherwise manufactured textile-based products for use in the healthcare industry. Many sewing companies offer contract sewing services to hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices, and other contexts in which health care services are administered.
Quick links to Medical Sewing Information
Applications for Medical Sewing
Doctors, nurses, and medical students all need access to scrubs, lab coats, lab aprons, and hair coverings. Hospitals and clinics often must provide their patients with gowns in advance of examinations or surgical procedures. Fabric slings and braces for patients with injuries have to be fabricated to exact specifications in order to ensure their safety and effectiveness. A given hospital or clinic examination room also extensively uses specialized sewn items. Padded positioning blocks and wedges that allow for patient comfort can require removable, disposable, or washable covers. Bedding materials like sheets and mattress covers must also be designed to fit specialized hospital beds. Other sewn medical equipment includes ice pack wraps, restraining equipment for stretchers, sleep disorder headgear, adjustable IV cover sleeves, newborn infant caps, and hospital draw sheets. Many medical sewing companies also offer custom sewing services to accommodate the great diversity of unique injuries for which people require custom sewn medical devices.
Standards of Medical Sewing
Every sewn medical product must always be free of defects and perform without incident; health care professionals demand perfection from every material they use. Any material that impedes or interferes with a medical procedure can have serious consequences for both health care professionals and patients. Even sewn medical products that will only be used once by one patient must adhere to strict quality and performance standards. Also, clothing, bedding, and other textile-based items intended for patient use often must be manufactured with hypoallergenic materials to minimize the risk of allergic reactions. Because of the demanding environment in which their products must perform, companies that offer medical sewing services are expected to guarantee the quality and precise measurements of their products. For this reason, many medical fabrics manufacturers use specialized computer programs to ensure precision in the manufacturing process. As an extra precaution, many manufacturers also subject all of their products to careful inspection at each stage of the manufacturing process. Few sewn product manufacturers are subject to as much scrutiny as medical sewers.