EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Technical Assistance MS16A Alarm mods

Hi,

How many of you carry out the continuous alarm modification on MS16As? I used to think that it was mandatory but it appears not. We now have both floating around our various hospitals. Mergers eh? It's always the simple things that cause the most trouble.

Personally I think they should have been thrown out years ago but there seems to be no credible alternative. We trialled a few a couple of years ago but the ones we tried were very disappointing.

So does the NPSA.

There is a notice out about replacing pumps that are set up in mm/hr or day (millimeters should not be used and pumps should be set in millilitres).

Have a look athe the Zimed and McKinley pumps Both are good.

RoJo

The Zimed looks quite natty. I like the idea of it being totally enclosed.
We had some serious issues with the McKinley T34's. We got a lot of occlusion alarms. We played around with the calibration and found problems with the occlusion detector, can't remember the exact details but we came across some other issues and decided not to go ahead with them.

Back to the MS16A, "to mod or not to mod" that is the question?

I'm not familiar with that mod, Bill.

Is it any use?

I guess that your immediate problem is to "make them all the same". So can you not just get away with following the line of least resistance? That is, make them all modded or all un-modded, depending upon the quantities you have of each?

The original alarm on the MS16A sounded for about 4 seconds then tailed off, the mod was to make the alarm continuous. We modified all our pumps to the continuous alarm. At the time I presumed that it was a safety thing (mandatory). It turns out that Smiths (nee. Graseby) sell the pumps with or without the mod. The problem we have is that prior to the merger of our trusts, the "others" did not carry out the mods, so we have a mixture of versions. We had a situation where we came across a pump that hadn't been modified so we modified it, a few years later the same pump came back to us in the original state. It had been across the city where they reinstated the timeout circuitry to the alarm durng a PPM. It is obvious that we need to decide which way to go which is why I'm canvassing opinion on this. My view is that the continuous alarm should be adopted, after all why bother with an alarm if it just goes away after 4 secs?

By the way we have approx. 350 of the little blighters, it is difficult to say which version is which at the moment.

As a good friend of mine has been known to say:- "it's always nice when everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet"!

Meanwhile, dare I suggest that this one sounds like a nice little "special task" for an agency tech, Bill.

I don't know about singing from the same hymn sheet, i'd probably be singing castrato if I suggested getting outside help in It is amazing how two departments five miles apart can do so many things differently. I'm sure we'll get there.

Ha, ha. Yes ... very good. Just a couple of octaves, maybe.

But "amazing"? Inexplicable more like!

Can I just also mention Micrel pumps as a viable alternative. Try to guess which company sells them!

Hi, just putting my 2 cents in, but I am surprised you are still allowed to use the MS16's, and where I am they have been removed from service due to their lack of safety features and non compliance with current standards. We replaced them with the ZiMeds, which were so crappy that almost every one in the country was removed from service and replaced with a T34, at massive expence to the original supplier.