EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Spirometer calibration

One of our clinicians has requested that we check all spirometers on a monthly basis. He said there is a governance guideline (he doesn't have a copy) that stipulates this.

Has anyone seen this guideline?

John

When he states that this is a Governance Guideline it suggests that it is a local guideline. Could somebody have suggested this at one of their Clinical Governance meetings or possibly a recommendation from a Royal College?

Just a thought

It's amazing how often clinicians request totally unrealistic services, referring to 'documents' or 'guidance' that they are unable to produce. We've recently experienced similar circumstances relating to sphygs. As far as spirometers are concerned, most manufacturers recommend frequent calibration checks, but these would normally be carried out by the users.

I'd be tempted to put the onus on the person requesting the work to produce the guidelines...

I certainly would have been concerned if someone had told me I had to spend an hour per spiro per month doing a full check on umpteen machines across multiple sites, especially as our respiratory techs carried out a syringe accuracy check every morning

Not sure you will find UK guidelines. The obvious places to try are the British Thoracic Society or the Association of Respiratory Technology however could not find a reference. In the States the equivalent is the American Thoracic Society and their statement can be found through this Link which states:
9.1 Quality control:(21)
9.1.1 Volume verification (ie, calibration): at least daily prior to testing, use a calibrated known-volume syringe with a volume of at least 3 L to ascertain that the spirometer reads a known volume accurately. The known volume should be injected and/or withdrawn at least 3 times, at flows that vary between 2 and 12 L/s (3-L injection times of approximately 1 second, 6 seconds, and somewhere between 1 and 6 seconds). The tolerance limits for an acceptable calibration are ± 3% of the known volume. Thus, for a 3-L calibration syringe, the acceptable recovered range is 2.91-3.09 L. We encourage the practitioner to exceed this guideline whenever possible (ie, reduce the tolerance limits to < ± 3%.

Agree this should be a user function however we have a traceable reference Calibration Syringe which is used on annual PPM's or when equipment is sent into the workshop. Would not expect our team to going out 'daily or monthly' to do this task.