EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Baxter Colleague

I could've sworn I posted this a few hours ago...so if anyone comes across a similar post it's one of mine!

Anyway.....
Has anyone found any of the specified errors?
Has anyone looked and not found?
Does anyone know why these errors are seen as more serious than the many other errors to which this pump is prone?
Has anyone changed clinical practice as a result of this issue?

Thankfully we've only got 6. All checked and the codes not found. However thay have been removed from service pending further guidance as we are unhappy leaving them in use with no clear cause. How often would we need to check for the codes in the future and is it safe to leave them in use and wait for a problem?
Hopefully this will be the lever to get them replaced with something more reliable.
Graham

We've got two, both checked and no codes found.
We took the decision to remove them from use, who knows if it might occur next time used.
Ther users, as well as ourselves, have no faith in these pumps. They have had limited use since bought and we would prefer it if Baxter took them back and returned our money.

Hello

We were one of the first Trusts to buy these back in 1997, we have over 100 of them and reliability has been a problem although with improvements it still only remains slightly better than in the early days.

I would appreciate feedback from Trusts using the newer version 4s with regard to reliability as we may be thinking of changing ours in the near future.

Regarding the current issue:

We are currently only half way through checking the pumps and have not found an error yet. In terms of this particular problem my understanding, after speaking to Baxter, is that when this problem occurs the pump stops and alarms as it would in the case for an occlusion for example.

It was explained to me that the deaths in the US were attributed to the use of the pumps with short lived drugs such as Inotropes for example. There are some questions that I would like to know the answer to "where was the nursing cover in these cases?" is just one.

In our particular case we are reliant upon these pumps, (one downfall of a standardisation policy maybe), but do not perceive this as a greater problem than say an occlusion.

The type of drugs administered that contributed to the deaths in the US are only used in our ITU with one to one nursing and usually by syringe pump.

With the correct controls in place I do not believe this presents such a large risk, particularly when we have found no evidence as yet.

Some good info there I think.

I note that some of you have removed them from service I wish I could but it is a non-starter unless we want to shut ITU, HDU, CCU, A&E and Labour.

V4 better than V2? Maybe, but all our triple channel are all V4 and no way would I describe them as reliable and I have just found out that they are even more unreliable than I suspected as ITU have not always been sending pumps up to us.

People who have done sweeps and found none of the specific errors, have you found other errors? We always find at least some errors, the ones where Baxter say "doesn't mean much, test and put back into service".

Whilst doing a download we came across error 0000 0000 0000 (something like that anyway) when we asked Baxter didn't know but rang back and said it was due to a fault in the download program.

Our version of the program does not allow searching for text within the download, is there an easy way to parse the file?

What do we do with V2 which don't have download?

From this you may guess that we have not done all that much yet; the kit is the same as it was a couple of weeks ago and, to be honest, Colleague errors don't evoke much of a sense of exitement or wonder. I know it will be my fault if something happens now I have been warned so we will be doing something.

Mark, I think maybe you are being a little unfair to our (US based) nursing colleagues. Inotropes are very quick acting, so much that our chaps prefered to give them through a bag rather that have to change the syringe every hour with an inevitable minute gap in therapy. I do agree that the risk using these pumnps is not so high but we are changing to giving inotropes through a 100ml syringe.

I have 1 pump that has an error : ' Failure 703:00' and a 'Fail 570:320:831:000'.

I have it in quarantine until Baxter instruct me what to do.

Checked 'em (11), found nowt !

We have 37 and have checked almost all of them without coming across any of the error codes.

We got Baxter in to check ours, has anyone else insisted on this?

Given Baxters explanation of why the two unfortunate deaths occured, we have left ours in service (rather than close wards).

Hi All,
We have 46, completed 42 tests with 2 failures.
We have also left the pumps in service as the pump is doing what it's supposed to do under fault conditions i.e. failing safe.
Pete

We have 246 of these units in our Trust. 188 have so far been checked by Baxter Healthcare, with no failures.
All units have been kept in service as they are known to fail safe in the event of any problem.
V4 software has made a difference to reliability over v2, although we do not have a great number of this version as yet. The original v2 pumps from 1999 were extremely unreliable.

Brian.