>700 Bed hospital

2.5 staff - Supervisor(ebme tech), pressure mattress maintenance tech and equipment collector/deliverer,

We supply and maintain -

Volumetric pumps
Syringe drivers, including MS26
Patient monitors
NG pumps
BP and pulse ox
Portable suction
Pressure mattresses and cushions.
Bariatric bedside chairs, comodes and wheelchairs.
Nebulisers
DVT pumps
Portable dopplers

Cheers
Mark

Hello Mark

Any ideas on quantities (for the equipment) and can I ask you the new official "Lee Stockton question" do you clean/disenfect your Pressure mattresses or do you send them away?

Lee

Lee,

>200 volumetrics
>100 syringe drivers
80 NG's
>140 pressure mattresses
>30 pressure cushions
Handful or two of every other product.

We launder mattress covers ourselves. We send mattresses away for deep-cleaning to either Huntleigh or Karomed.

Cheers
Mark

Geoff
One reason for the increased usage of pressure relieving matress is the lack of a tissue viability nurse coupled with a lack of understanding by nursing staff in the advances in static matress technolgy i.e. Tempura. The standard criteria for deciding on the need for expensive therapeutic devices is based solely on the age of the patient.

Thanks for that, Charlie.

Perhaps that helps to explain also the recent announcement that all those entering the field of nursing from 2013 shall be required to come armed with a degree.

So it seems I was on the right lines regarding the "old dears", then. That is, the increase in the use of APM's is all down to the aging population. That, and the other reasons you mention!

(apologies to Lee for the digression)

Waterlow scoring http://www.judy-waterlow.co.uk/the-waterlow-score-card.htm A nurse from Taunton!

The nurses seem to forget/don't know that they are still meant to 'turn' the patients on pressure mattresses as well as statics.

Modern static mattresses will go up tp a Waterlow score of 20.

Cheers
Mark

Judy Waterlow Jones MBE. We need more like her (who, I believe, now gives of her time voluntarily at Musgrove Park).

But nurses "forgetting" ... is it even on the syllabus?

Slightly off topic, but I don't think that the OP minds.

We never seem to have enough pressure mattresses. We've since found out that this is because there is no management of the supply of static mattresses around the hospital.

Wards 'lose' their statics when they use our pressure mattresses because there isn't any storage areas for unused statics.

We don't get our pressure mattresses back because the wards haven't got any statics to replace them with.

Our hospital never seems to have any storage areas for equipment. Hopefully, storage areas have been accounted for in our new to be built surgical building .. building work starts 2010.

Geoff, our WWII buildings plus the tree are being bulldozed.

Anyway, management of pressure mattresses should go hand-in-hand with the management of statics. Efficient use of time and resources.

Cheers
Mark

Mark, don't forget to take the before and after pictures

Philistines! That was the best part of the hospital! Have "these people" no sense of history? As I have mentioned before, a thoughtful design would have retained elements of the original buildings (as has been done elsewhere).

After all, they could have stored the mattresses there!

No need to bother with the "after" photo's, Mark. We already have a pretty good idea what the architects will come up with! But if you must take pictures ... wait until ten years time, and see what it looks like then.

I can't help wondering if the graveyard across the road is next on the list.

Meanwhile, did the Multi-Storey Carpark ever get off the ground (yes, a pun), I wonder?