Hi Mandy,
Risk assesment of medical equipment can be carried out in various ways, you have to make a judgement based on experience and equipment history.
One method uses the likelihood of a given piece of equipment breaking down and causing physical harm in its broken stae. The device is given a ppm priority based on device's risk level which is based on the following analysis.
1) A device's likelihood of breaking down.
2) The chance of the device's faulty state being noticed by a non-technical person.
3) The chance of the device causing serious injury in defective state.
You can assign a risk number to every device type in your care on a scale of 1, for lowest risk, to 9, for the greatest risk for each category: likelihood of breaking down, likelihood of causing injury and likelihood of the break down being noticed. These figure can then be used to guide you and if you want to get more technical you can use the following formula:
RP(Relative Probability of breakdown * (RP of for serious injury ) divided by the (RP of the Breakdown being noticed ) = Severity Score
Risk Levels:
A Score over 27 HIGH RISK
B Score between 19 to 27 MEDIUM/HIGH
C Score between 10 to 18 MODERATE RISK
Score below 9 LOW RISK
The above is based on the model detailed by Ethan Hertz, published in Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology.
