EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Technical Assistance Alaris Signature infusion pumps - Any good??

We are hoping to replace our exisiting neonatal pumps with devices having pressure display and history facilities. The Alaris Signature pumps seem to fit the bill but we haven't had any experience with these. They seemed to come out quite well in the last evaluation of IV equipment.

Any help would be appreciated


Brian

Hi Brian,

Generally we find the pumps are well liked by the staff and quite reliable. Watch out for the price of the batteries. Also the syringe force sensor fault. This is generally caused by staff carrying the pump by the syringe plunger carriage.
We have found that the end user training from the company has been extremely poor.

Todd, I think you are getting mixed up with the asena.

We have a few signatures in use for TPN. They seem to do the job well enough.

There is an internal cooling fan. This comes on occasionally (as it is meant too). We have had comments about this waking the patient. Whether this would be a problem in NNU - I doubt it, but it would be worth having one in use next to a crib for a couple of weeks, and see if the baby is affected by this.

Your right John,
I only realised after id posted the response, didnt get chance to correct myself.
Anyway the asenas are still good

Todd

Hi Brian,

We currently have 80 single channel Signitures and one recently purchased dual channel. Overall we have found these pumps to be extremely reliable and have not found any major short comings with them.
The event log facility we have found to be invaluable in proving the sequence of events in clinical incidents and also trying to understand what staff have been doing when you get that obscure fault reported that usually results in the scratching of heads !

Battery management has sometimes been an issue but if you are aware that the pump has its own battery refresh facility (NiCad cycle) and is performed when PPM'd there is no problem. Our own pumps of which the oldest are two and half years old are just starting to require battery replacement which I don't think is bad for a NiCad battery.
Calibration of the pump is both quick and uncomplicated and does not require any special equipment other than the obligatory IDA/Burette and digital monometer. Also worth mentioning is the manufacturers recomended PPM interval is 12 months.

If you want to contact myself or John who you know to have a more in depth chat please don't hesitate to give us a ring Brian.