Geoff
My understanding is that retention of EST results for electric kettles etc is mandatory under the Electricity at Work Act or some other law governing the sparks. I just apply the safety levels for toasters etc as the absolute minimum morally acceptable for patient equipment, EXCEPT where the MHRA or IEC have specified a more stringent standard. In other words I can see no practical circumdstance in which the level of care of a pump or monitor should fall below that you would give to a toaster, whatever the government experts may have omitted to specify.
As for the interest in results, a lot of techies debate whether thay should electricaly test infusion devices with a fluid filled set installed as an Applied Part or whether that is a waste of time. Its definitely a waste of time! I have 25 years of retained test results without a single Applied Part electical failure for an infusion device as proof of that. On the other had I've a few failures for monitoring equipment as absolute proof that they do need AP tests. So retaining the actual results has real usefulness. How else can you risk assess againt evidence that will stand up in court? A Pass/Fail flag is totaly unacceptable. Apart form any legal requirements for retention, a supervising technician has no hope whatever of checking the competency of a junior technician against their stored results if the AREN'T ANY stored results.
It's even possible to get beautifull EST passes for instance while not connecting the IUT to the tester correctly. You can get an earth bonding pass with the IUT plugged into a wall socket instead of the tester if theres a good electrical circuit in room. Looking over newbies test results can reveal a lot about what they are or aren't doing. Looking at little boxes ticked on forms that all say "Pass" tells you nothing.
If anyone asks, "How many EST failures did you get last year and why not just visual check ?" I COULD answer them if I could search within the EST text files electronicaly for the word "Failed". That's why I want a text search program or conversion to PDF.
All the best
Marc
