The Importance of Maintaining Your Medical Equipment
Patient care is always the top concern for medical facilities, but in order to care for patients properly, we need to ensure they are maintaining and managing medical equipment properly. Here we will talk about why this is so important and some tips for improving maintenance and management of medical equipment.
Why Maintaining Medical Equipment is Important
The main reason for maintaining medical equipment is to make that equipment last as long as possible and work as efficiently and effectively as possible. This not only helps hospitals and LTCs costs for needing new equipment down but ensures that the equipment is in perfect condition when needed. One thing we learned during the COVID pandemic is that although you may have the equipment if it’s not maintained and kept in good condition to be used, it is nearly useless. This was a widespread problem with ventilators – although places had a stockpile, many were old and had been sitting untouched for years. This is obviously a worst-case scenario, but in the medical and health field, you can never be too prepared.
Tips for Maintaining Medical Equipment
There are many maintenance ordinances already in place for hospitals, but we wanted to lay out some extra tips so nothing is missed in maintaining equipment in the future.
Document Inventory: Keeping a record of what you have will help you be prepared yourself, and to help others if needed. This makes everything easier when this equipment is needed.
Keep Inventory Organized: While every place is different and has a different system, knowing your system and knowing how things are organized helps you locate equipment in a timely matter and know if anything is missing or broken.
Keep Inventory Clean and Protected: Come up with a regular cleaning schedule. A great way to keep things safe is also to have an organized, designated area that is away from regular use to avoid contamination.
Perform Regular Maintenance: Have a schedule for maintenance to come in and check this equipment over. This is VITAL to do so your equipment is ready at any time needed.
Perform Tests or Drills for ICE Use: Just like we do fire drills, we should be doing emergency drills for this equipment. In most cases, it is an emergency or is needed very fast so knowing where to get the equipment, what to do, where to log it, etc. Is important for all staff to limit unnecessary questions or errors.
If you have questions about how to keep your ventilators or respiratory equipment maintained or need help with stockpile management, feel free to contact us at Trace Medical. We’re more than happy to help, no matter what the case.