Is it possible for one home aide to use a hoyer lift?

I'm revisiting this post after a long while. Since returning home almost 2 years ago, my mother has never needed the Hoyer. A single aide has had no problem transferring her from wheelchair to bed. She was probably close to 200 pounds (5' 6") when she first got home, and is now more like 130-140, due to infections, hospitalizations, losing her appetite, aging, etc. We have a Hoyer in her room, but no one has ever used it. It's definitely an SNF rule to have two people and a Hoyer. It was excessive in my mom's case, but I can see that the transfer of a very tall and large person could be problematic.

We used a hoyer for years with my father. All my siblings and I were trained and all caregivers we hired from Home Instead were trained before they came to the house. We had a hydraulic lift which one person could operate. The difficulty was getting the sling under him. That was brutal at times for me and my sisters, though I went on youtube recently and learned that there was a new hoyer sling that was easier to use.

We use a Hoyer lift rented from the same company we rent my dad's hospital bed from and it is fine. My sibling and I are able to operate it alone without any problem. When he is in bed, we tuck the sling under him when he is sitting up with the head of the bed up, and we just slide it in behind him, etc. 

We did get quite a lot of training and practice using it while my dad was at spinal cord injury rehab (and he was there about a month). Both OT and PT helped us learn how to use it for getting in and out of bed, into the wheelchair, and lowered onto the commode. When my dad came home from rehab, the OT and PT visits we had at home included making sure use of the Hoyer was going OK.

Basically, it's not hard but you want to be trained on it by a pro.

Good aides can operate the hoyer alone - when I'm there, I generally assist but have not done it on my own

There are times when I have to tell the aides to pay better attention as they are busy looking at the remote and not seeing either the bar pressing into mom or her feet getting caught

Thankfully, mom has been accepting of it, but it does give me pause to see her hanging in it until she's over her bed

@LisaSaline do you have an attorney?? You really really need one. Where do you live?

If the person is in a wheelchair all day, how do you ward off "bed" sores from the chair?

You make sure they are repositioned every two hours. You use a Roho or similar cushion on the seat. You are hypervigilant about examining her skin every day.

I am a 73 year old wife of a husband that needs transferring from bed to chair. I have done it all on my own for about 5 yrs. Our is not electric. Its a challenge on occasion but I always manage to get it done. So a healthy young person should have no problems.

YES! Check with the regulations in your state, but when my uncle was in the rehab center, they are required by Washington state law to have 2 aides to transfer by hoyer. But I worked for a In home agency for 10 years and I had several clients that I moved using a single assist hoyer lift. I am now at home with my uncle and he STILL uses the hoyer for transfers and I move him by myself ALL THE TIME!!!! He has a tilt in space wheelchair and that makes it REALLY nice when I put him in it...all I have to do is tilt the wheelchair back and put him in it. Gravity does the rest to make sure that his back and bottom are all the way back and he is positioned the way he needs to be! As long as you are using the hoyer in a private home....a hoyer can be a single person transfer!

My mom's MLTC aides could do this by themselves (NYS). And I could do it by myself but my mom was very docile. It's pretty easy.