EBME Forums Forums Free discussion Free discussion GMT or not ?

As so many devices have calendar clocks built in for 'History logging' etc - how many engineers have to rush round their sites twice a year adjusting them ? or is an initial setting to GMT acceptable?
What do you do ?

I agree Garrith it is a bit of a pain. Our networked monitors are easy, adjust one and then all follow. Unfortunately I think with defibs and ecg recorders it is quite critical to have the correct time on them for legal reasons. Ofcourse entering the engineering mode is often the only way to adjust the time. Anyway I think times must be changed and by us..

I tried a couple of years ago to get a "once and for all decision" on clock setting. We suggested that all medical device clocks should be set to GMT as opposed to changing them when we find them. The clinical staff came back to us and said they couldn't make up their minds They said that instead they would like us to come in very early on sunday mornings, and change the clocks on everything we could find. We eventually compromised on the major networked systems (on mondays) and other items the user would either wait until the next service or call us to it.
The clock changing is a pain and I don't like going home in the dark either...

We had an incident in Maternity which resulted in the lady making a complaint about the "delay" in getting her into theatre once the medical staff had decided the baby was showing signs of distress. The delay was about 20 minutes because another lady was already in the theatre having a section. When the complaint was investigated the staff were in a very difficult position because the time printed on the strip from the monitor sugested that the lady had waited 1hr 20min - because the time was wrong on the monitor !
I believe she won her claim for compensation on the strength of this evidence.

It's imposible to set all the times correctly twice a year. Better I think to be consistent and leave them set to GMT, that's what I have told my people to do. You asked the clinical staff! Foolish person, of course you don't get a reply.

It's OK leaving time at GMT, but it makes life very difficult if you are investigating a clinical incident or using the 'history' features in any other way.
We're encouraging the nurses to use this feature, and incorrect time may cause more problems than it solves. Especially now the
nurses are correlating their written documentation with the history feature, esp. in infusion devices.

I agree with Andrea. Leaving equipment with the wrong time is a dangerous practice if you have a problem. We have found a few pieces of equipment with totally the wrong time, date, month even year when we were going round to update the hour change.
Yes, I know this should be checked when a PPM is done - but I don't think we're unusual in not having enough people to do PPMs on anything but the 'high risk' equipment and clocks seem to be appearing in just about everything these days !
You could always train the users to change the time

Aside from confusing the nursing staff what's the problem with leaving it always set to GMT? It is at least consistent. Airlines and such people, who have similar poblems but much worse, always maintain their times at GMT often translating it on the fly as required, surely nurses can understand this concept and do the same. You will notice that this very site clearly states that all times are GMT, but then what did it say in summer? Perhaps Huw will tell us. On my sites he time does change; NT4 is set to do it autmatically and being centralised it is easy. Untill deices ae clever enough to self-adjust or even self set we have a problem.

It would save a lot of our time if it could standardised to GMT.
how would we get it off the ground?

Thanks for all the replies so far

Would it get off the ground if recommended / advised by the MDA? or Health & Safety ?