EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Equipment Fault Reporting

We also have an Estates helpdesk but do not use them. We cover quite a wide geographical area and actively encourage users to contact us directly. All calls are logged here by technical staff and often the problem can be sorted out over the phone.e.g. "My ECG recorder will not print anything and the paper comes out blank and will not stop on its own". Have you put the paper in the right way round?" Nurse goes away and and we can all guess what she'd done. Immediate reponse without travelling 20 miles. But yes we do get the "night staff" who scribble little notes "not working". I'm going to come in one night and catch them!

"Needs fixed" is the most common fault reporting system here.Usually on a post it note.

We have an Estates Help Desk, we don't it either. We encourage users to talk to us, who understand, rather than an operator who does not.

We have no clerical input, everything is done by the technical chaps (no chapesses I am afraid) in real time straight into the database. Sometimes we sort it over the phone, sometimes we attend site to sort it, most times we make the users bring it to us. Mostly we get a luggage label (ours, orange, printed both sides, etc the other side is a decon cert.) tied on the kit with a fault descripion though there are still too many "broken" and "not workings"

We also have an estates central fault-reporting centre Known officially as “the help desk” Unofficially as “the unhelpful desk”.
They won’t allow anyone to report anything without an asset no, no matter how important life or death.
The also prefer short fault descriptions like “dead, don’t work, faulty and not working properly” easier to type and this allows them to carry on playing solitaire.
Sorry got bitter there for a minute.
Unofficially we also take calls and pick up broken units on our way round the hospitals and raise dockets ourselves.
All repairs and ppm histories are recorded on the central council system “SAP”
The reporting system only works properly for the accountants to print useless reports and analyse piles of b****hit.
“Since C has to equal A+B". A + B bears very little resemblance to actual times taken to repair etc. The accounts cannot comprehend that we can work on more than one thing at once and finding faults can vary in time.

All manner of communications accepted, most usually the phone, we have however the need for a crystal ball to be installed! Those who get a post it note are posh, usually a hand towel with 'broken', 'not working' or 'needs reporting' micro-pored to the case is what we get.

Ah micropore, the nursing equivalent of farmers bailing twine!

We use our own helpdesk for fault reporting, and all wards/departments have been issued with a Equipment Faulty Label, which allows the user to segregate faulty equipment and also ensures that the equipment has been decontaminated safeguarding our own engineers.

Dear Ruth,

(in case you thought we had forgotten you!)

In our case, historically all of the above.
However our new 'official' system, when the goods actually arrive is for the Staff (including the Porters) delivering said offensive equip., to ensure a Decontamination Certificate is completed and attached to the device.

Equipment will not be accepted without one.

So we recently realised we were missing a trick and re-designed the Trust's Decontamination form the include a fault reporting section, which people (more often than not) tend to have to fill in.

So even if we take a garbled message as well over the phone, once the call is booked, details can be amended at point of receipt of hardware.

We reserve the option .. depending on caffeine levels ;-) .. to bounce back to department if not completed fully / to our satisfaction.

This is also valuable for audit purposes (it's ISO9001:2000 don't cha know)

Regards, C

Hi, from the nursing perspective here! The device is cleaned and tagged (red decontamination label) Then one phone number to report it. On the label, we are trying to encourage certain information being written in the blank boxes, such as ebme no., name of device, what is actually wrong with it and a legible name as a point of contact. I try to enforce this last one as ebme may have helpfull suggestions for what went wrong or be able to pinpoint a problem easier speaking to the person who found the fault.(Common sense, really) Also, as I say in my training, writing 'broken' does not give a lot of information away ;-) The job number then is recorded at ward level and on the label. Hard work getting staff to do this, but getting there.

Officially we will accept equipment from a member of the department or porter, ensuring it has a Decontamination certificate and a form requesting maintenance. (A large stock of paperwork is held at the workshop entrance for those who forget!!)
For large equipment and stack systems we accept a phone call detailing the problem, we can then remind staff which paperwork is required.

Although it is a struggle to think that staff actually do user checks as we have just found a syringe pump in a corner, which seemed to have internally combusted, (For how long as that been there for we ask!!!)

PS Since Snowler left I have moved on to music like 'The Smurfs' and 'Bob the Builder'
They Rock!