EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Quick Response Technician/ Triage

Anyone had any experience of implementing a Quick Response (Triage) Technician to grab stuff as in comes in the door to see if it can be turned around quickly (<20 minutes) or consigned to the "incoming wounded" shelves as usual. ??

Great Idea,in theory.
You have to try,but we work ours on a rota basis,which means some quick fixes get through,dependant on the person on duty,and their knowledge/level of interest.
Sometimes the equipment is due for servive anyway.
Or needs to go on charge.
Batteries,probes,disposables,exchange units can be supplied ex stock but some items,(Thermometers/
Glucotrends/Medisense) are hampered where inventory numbers need to be generated,also staff bringing equipment up sometimes cannot or will not wait,or dump things and escape.And we also have to test CPAP machines whilst the patient waits.
What tends to happen is that more and more duties are piled on to the QRT,including the logging in of everything,and it has become a chore more than a challenge or opportunity to provide instant customer satisfaction.
And once the equipment gets put on the shelves it loses impetus.
So beware.

Each technician in our dept takes it in turn to log jobs in - this hopefully fast-tracks some jobs.
I'm now based in our Equipment Library servicing all the equipment that the library holds.
Re. infusion devices - I can now turn these around faster. They're not waiting their turn any longer on the jobs shelf in the Electronics dept. We never appear to have enough volumetric pumps so the less time that they're out of service the better.
In turn, this all helps to improve the status of the Equipment Library.
Cheers

Thanks for the warnings! We had anticipated the very problems you experienced but, as usual, given no choice in the matter.

We, too, are using a rota of the five MTO3's in the Section. Quite how we will integrate the QRT with the Equipment Library when it gets running remains to be decided.

What other "good ideas in theory" do we have to look forward to from the mutual acquaintance?

Here at Wexham Park there are 2 engineers and the manager, (another engineer at Heatherwood).
We endevour to respond almost imediatly to calls from ITU / SCBU / A&E /and any other high priority area, and any ward where there is a breakdown which is considered to be serious, ie faulty defib. Otherwise general repairs are undertaken more or less in rotation, subject to space available at test equipment, known spares, and space etc.
While we are always very busy as far as I know there are no complaints about our service, indeed we are welcomed with open arms and praise most of the time.
(On a personal note that is what makes the job so satisfying, after many thankless years in industry).
This may not be the ideal but it seems to work quite well here.

Sorry,the Qrt position is a post where someone is always available to people visiting workshop ,any urgent HDU /AITU/ CCU/ICU/NNU/Theatres calls are responded to as quickly as possible and quite
independently of the QRT or if the specialist for the area is on QRT duty,they get someone else to cover the post whilst they respond,it does require team-work,but stops the same people from always being interrupted,but the workshop layout still leads to that,to some extent .

Nice to have the staff to do that, with just the two of us we cover all things. Apart from repairing, and sojurns to wards and theatres we answer the door and the phones. It makes for a preety hectic day!!!.

We have Barry, who does a 'ward round' every day taking a large trolley to pick up repairs. He does on-the-spot repairs for a good number of items. Otherwise repairs are just classified as normal or urgent.

Mark

What's a Medical Physicist do then?

Gentlemen, fellow techs, do as Ray says and classify your equipment into some form of priority, i.e. defibs, vents, and other frontline life support etc. give them a class 1, other equipment can be categorized depending upon availability of spare units and/or clinical importance/user demand etc. This gives the user a sense of security knowing that frontline emergency cover is instantly available, very important in these times of the KPO (Krout Parsite Organization) hovering over our empires as this is definitely one service these locusts could not deliver.