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Hi JoLee

That’s one of the reasons I started the User Manual Library - most people will reluctantly read up on how some thing should work - but that for 2-to-10 % who have natural curiosity - they need all the support they can get – and lets be honest – if you go to a talk when a sales rep does a in-service ( when the item is first bought ) you lucky if you retain a fraction of the limited amount of information passed on –taking interruptions etc into account .

The more complex devices become , they more user related issues we are going to have deal with and as a hospital biomed we are the GP’s of medical equipment .


Take a look at the demo I setup on youtube :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WP9zg0wwhY

Regards George
www.bioclinicalservices.com

Nice one, George. Brilliant!

Now, how about getting all those nice .pdf's available to people here ... or here?

Meanwhile, surely I'm not alone in being one of the "2-to-10 %" who actually enjoys sitting down with a good technical manual? I got waylaid going through some yesterday. 25 years old, but the information was still good (interesting). Some were well-written, some not so good. In fact the best ones, I find, are (were) often cheaply produced, but being obviously based on the designers' notes, are usually full of "gems"!

All good stuff, no doubt. But not really what JoLee was driving at in her original post, I fear.

Geoff

I have tried up loading service manuals to that site a number of times without much luck ( I have a quite a few ) and I will gladly e-mail or send a disk to the administrator with them ( and in the past I have sent service manuals to people who have requested them on this site ) – however just like this ebme site – somebody has to give up a lot of time to build the it , collect and manage the files , keep them up to date and pay for all the associated costs ( and hence I can see and agree with the commercial interests associated with ebme site )

This site is for hospitals , probably those of more than 100 beds – it will save them £ ($) 1000.00s in setup and labour cost associated with doing it themselves and I charge a annual subscription which is about as much as one biomed call-out ( which could be for a user related issue ).

This is the good idea that everybody spoke about , but some how the amount of work involved to make it happen put 99.9% of them off – not to mention to the associated costs etc

To make it work it needs to be supported and that’s what I would like to think biomeds do ( and hence the success of the ebme site – nobody makes mention of the income generated from it and so they shouldn’t – those who set it up did the work – and good on them )

ps some how I am not able to get onto the restricted access link ?

Thanks for your interest

(I shall respond under this thread in order to clear the decks for JoLee)

Huw ... please allow George access!

The IVAC service manuals are a bit special. With the circuit diagrams and circuit descriptions, I am pretty sure after reading one of these manuals, you could teach yourself electronics - Quality.

Yes, I agree. I have another nice example behind me as I write. The Lifepak 5 manual from 1985. I really do believe that manuals were generally of a higher quality back in those days. Some of the modern ones are little more than "sales guides", and obviously prepared in an almighty rush, like almost everything else nowadays.

PS: notice that these manuals (the Ivacs and the Physio-Controls) were from the States ... so perhaps there's a clue right there. As a boy I can remember being impressed with my Dad's 1942 Canadian Chevrolet military truck manuals. They were works of art, and produced under wartime constraints, too (that is, also in a bit of a rush). Lovely cutaway illustrations of engines, gearboxes, back axles, and all the rest. Some of the old International Harvester (of Chicago, Illinois) tractor manuals of that same period were also works of art. I wish I still had those books today!

Anyway,

Maybe we could set up a training course matrix as a reference which could be updated quaterly. I am not sure how this would be best administered, possibly Huw could give us a pointer here. I could compile a spreadsheet with hyperlinks and upload it somehow. As people come aware of courses and training they could inform us and the consolidated data could be uploaded.

Oh, I guess we're back on topic now, then (regrettably). OK, I suppose that JoLee's not really into Fordson tractors, either!

All good stuff. No doubt us taxpayers will be only too pleased to foot the bill of all that extra training.

As has already been mentioned, if people (techs, I'm thinking of) need training, they can always seek it out. Personally, I would much prefer NHS staff to be at work, where I (and a few others) pay them to be!

Meanwhile, perhaps Huw would like to look into maintaining an "easy reference" list of available courses under the Training Courses heading?

Come on Geoff, everything comes back to the taxpayer. If you do not want trained people working on the kit, fine - we will see what happens to the resultant litigation bill.

If you get the training 'thrown in' when you purchase the goods, great - but the company will recoup this cost one way or another.

How do you suggest we fund it - the lottery