Thank you to the EBME / Medical Engineers currently working hard to commission thousands of ‘Covid-19’ medical equipment assets for hospitals and wards across the UK.
New field hospitals, and new Covid-19 hospital wards within our current NHS hospitals are currently being transformed to provide support for many the thousands of sick patients with the covid-19 virus.
To actually commission the equipment country-wide requires a monumental effort from the medical engineering community, with many engineers from the public and private sectors teaming up to accelerate the process from unpacking the equipment to setting up the bed space.
Each of those bed spaces needs a variety of equipment, including the bed, ventilator, patient monitor, defibrillator, syringe pumps, infusion pumps, flowmeters, and suction. (with the associated piped gases). These devices are assembled, checked, and installed into the bed space. We are proud of all our professional colleagues, who are making such a tremendous effort to get these bed spaces operational. It is the hard work of these engineers and technicians, that enables additional equipment to be ready for the doctors and nurses to use. NHS critical care capacity will continue to increase over the coming weeks, by several thousand beds, with the support and hard work of our medical engineering community.
The NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said: "Under these exceptionally challenging circumstances the NHS is taking extraordinary steps to fight coronavirus. That’s why NHS clinicians and managers are working with military planners, and engineers to create, equip, staff and open the NHS Nightingale London, and we’re very grateful for their support".
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: "In the face of this unprecedented global emergency, we are taking exceptional steps to increase NHS capacity so we can treat more patients, fight the virus and save lives. "I applaud the NHS, engineers, and the military for their continued work on setting up the new NHS Nightingale Hospital so it is ready to open its doors next week – a remarkable feat in these challenging circumstances."
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: "Military planners, and engineers, are working hand in hand with the NHS to support their development of the NHS Nightingale Hospital".
In extraordinary times like these, engineers are pulling out all the stops to ensure lives can be saved. Thank you and well done to every engineer participating in the commissioning of new field hospitals and new wards within their own hospitals.
