Hi everyone. Our EBME department is starting a programme to train all the users on the Medical Devices in the Hospital. I don't feel comfortable with this as I've not been in the job long and don't really have the experience yet. How do other Hospitals train their users? How do other ebme members feel about about biomeds training users on a regular basis?

I am a medical device trainer and part of the Clinical Engineering department. I was specifically employed to do the job.
I think you have to be the right sort of person to train, some people are very uncomfortable talkingi in front of other so just to say to people "go and do it" is wrong. You need the right people to do it correctly. Some of the current staff might be OK but only they and the managers can decide on that.
Should it be part of EBME/Clinical Engineering? In my opinion, Yes. It is all part of equipment management and you are teaching about equipment so you need some technical knowledge, it is also very helpful if you have clinical expaerience as well. This is unlikely if you are just tellling technical people to do it.
If the current people have the skills and ability to do it right, lucky you. The best thing to do is to employ the right people for the job.
Is this in reality a box ticking exercise for CQC outcome 11, we do user training - box ticked - but we do not care how well it is done so are not doing it properly which costs money in wages.
RoJo
PM me if you want to talk more.

Welcome to the forum Funks.

I've been involved in the engineering support and maintenance of medical equipment since 1974. Yet I still refuse to get involved with training user staff.

Why is that? Well, it's not that I mind talking (and I learned all about "Methods of Instruction" in the army, many years ago now). It's simply that not only do I believe that it's "not part of the job", but (and more to the point) I also regard it as unethical for engineering technicians to train clinical staff.

By the way, I have always taken this line, so at least I can claim to be consistent.

But I also hear what Robert is saying. The training needs to be done. But let it be carried out by specialists who have the knowledge, skills and yes, aptitude (not to mention the time and resources) to properly carry it out.

I think a distinction needs to be made between "user training": and "clinical training" here. They are not the same.

I have never received any formal clinical training in my life and would not assume to claim that I could provide that. However, as an experienced "user" of various equipments I have provided training to clinical staff in the function and control systems of a variety of types of equipment. NOT, absolutely NOT in the detail of clinical application or interpretation but rather in the functional use. A quite different thing.

Indeed. But not always completely understood by those receiving the training, in my experience.

How about:-

1) "Here's the Users Manual"
2) "Go away and read it"
3) "Come back to me if you've got any technical questions"
4) "But see the Nurse Tutor* for anything else"

* Other suitably qualified trainers may be available, depending upon the nature and the type of equipment in question.

I remember the words of a regular visitor to this forum some years ago, 'fix the operator'. I have always provided user training on request but alway make it clear this is not clinical training. We as engineers often know the pitfalls of a device better that the nursing staff so why not pass tht on it the form of awarness training? Hopefully reduce the number of items sent in for repair with no fault found.

This is where proper user training comes in to pay with "proper" people. This is how you use a blood pressure machine is all well and good but if the user then says "What is a normal BP?" it is not helpful to say "See someone else".
Horses for courses
RoJo

"Fix the operator" by all means. But advice, and training, are two different things, I would have thought.

Best leave training, especially in the shark-infested litigious waters of the USA and its colonies, to the professionals like Robert, I reckon.

Have to say, if a nurse said that to me I'd be off to have a quiet word with the nurse manager of the ward

(Ok RoJo, I do accept that you may just have been giving a simplified example)

We've had nurses trying to record ECGs on people with tights on! Good knows what training the nurses are given before going on the wards but it seems non existent.

I wish I was.
We are now doing a lot of training for support workers who have now been told their role includes patient observations, but they have not had the clinical training to back this up so it is just numbers to them.

RoJo


Scare stories that happened where I used to work:
Nurses calls up, "Can you have a look at the ECG machine it is not working". Tech gets there. Nurse says "The patient's monitor has stopped working as well". Guess the common factor that had stopped working. The patients heart!

Call to tech, "The sats machine is reading low". Tech puts it on his finger, it reads fine, said to nurse "I think your patient needs oxygen" (their lips were blue). Nurse puts oxygen on to patient sats come up to normal. "Oh it is working OK" says the nurse and takes oxygen off patient and watches the sats fall again.

My opinion is that when nurse training was taken out of hospitals and put in to universities they lost all clinical skills.
PPS I am an ex nurse who saw this at first hand.

Bloody hell has no one in the UK heard of "clinical risk"?

The Oz nursing system has been Uni based for many years (15+) but also includes a large amount of time in associated hospitals under the watchful eyes of the nurse managers. Have to say that in this part of the world it seems to work reasonably well. There would be "hell to pay" if the sort of carry on that you describe occurred and the staff in question would be either undergoing re-education quick smart or find themselves at the dole office just as fast

Sorry folks, just realised that the comment above will bring on another one of Geoff's rants about falling standards, immigration, the good old days, etc, etc.....

My apologies in advance

I think a few extreme examples should not taint a whole profession but as I said my personal feeling is that clinical standards have fallen and it is not the nurses fault, they are not being taught the correct things.
I hear a lot of student nurses complaining that they are taught a lot of theory about interpersonal relationships and similar airy-fairy topics and not practical skills like how to operate a BP machine.

Is it because the universities are business that get paid by numbers and not results and standards? Hence they want to look good by having lots of passes and get more students through rather than aiming for academic achievement?

RoJo

And back to topic:-
Hence the need for a lot of Medcial Device (and other clinical) training

We have here an education department as many of you may have. I asked the question of them 'Who trains the staff on the safe use of equipment', 'not us we only make sure they are up to date' was the answer. Well then who teachs them, 'Reps or themselves was the answer'.
So I have to say why are we paying alot of people to push paper around under the disguise of an education department.

The staff need shown how to operate equipment especially how to plug it in to charge!!!

We have had doctors here trying that Funks, and also blaming a defib for not bringing back to life someone with a flat line. So it isnt just the nurses.

As has been stated we can only train them on how to operate the equipment safely and someone else has to train them on what type of patient the equipment should be used on.

Some of above posts remind me of a nice cartoon that an Egyptian biomed once showed me:-

It was labeled "The Biomed". If you can imagine an "atlas" type figure, down on one knee, back stooped and carrying the whole hospital on his shoulders ... well, no doubt you get the idea.

@Billy: how can that be? Surely the nurses all have degrees now, just like the doctors? But (when all else fails) don't forget:- "Monkey see, monkey do"!

@Dave: Public Sector staff in the UK don't get fired. Instead "lessons get learned", don't you know.

@Dave: yes, many "adjustments" (in plain English:- looking the other way whilst standards of care have fallen) have been made to accommodate the overwhelming numbers of immigrants who have been "welcomed" to these shores. And not only in the healthcare sector. If apologies are due, then surely they should be coming from successive so-called "governments" who have sold us down the river!

But fear not! For the way things are looking just at the moment, they'll need to be bringing back conscription soon. At least that might make a start in sorting the wheat from the chaff, especially if all those with "right to remain" are included (in which case, stand by for a mass exodus)!

As if to support what I'm saying above ... check out the comments here.

Training is as far as I am concerned is a function of management and it is not down to any one individual to award competence. Why is it when there is equipment training to be done it falls to the technician/engineer to come up with the solution and the infernal arguement about who signs who off as competent?!
It is no different within the decontamination/CSSD/dental decon where standards of training are noticeably lacking in some areas.
Quick rant over!!

If there is no device training how do people answer CQC outcome 11c?
RoJo