FEATURE ARTICLES
HOW BIOMEDICAL SERVICES TECHNICIANS MAKE HOSPITALS SAFER Michael Brown Biomedical services technician Christchurch Public Hospital
Christchurch Hospital is the largest teaching and research hospital in the South Island of New Zealand, with over 4,000 staff on site. It provides a full range of emergency, acute, elective and outpatient services. In this article, biomedical services technician Michael Brown explores the crucial role of ‘biomeds’ in making the hospital a safer place. Christchurch Hospital has the busiest emergency department (ED) in Australasia, treating more than 83,000 patients a year. On average, 300 patients pass through it every day. As a biomedical services technician, I am a member of a team that currently consists of 31 members, making it the largest clinical engineering department in New Zealand. Out of the 31 members, our department is broken down into smaller sub-groups, comprising of a dedicated dialysis service, mobility services, school and community dental, theatres, labs and several other hospitals. Our department also manages equipment over more than 50 sites, from private hospitals through to small medical centres. When people ask me what I do as a ‘biomed’, I tell them that I service and repair anything that plugs into a patient and a wall. A colleague once described it this way: if all the clinicians moved to a new building, we would go with the doctors and nurses, whereas facilities maintenance would stay with the building. The main part of my job is maintaining and repairing medical devices however, the position is much broader than this. All medical centres and hospitals in New Zealand must comply with the AS/NZS3551 standard for managing medical equipment. In Australia, I understand that this standard is considered best practice whereas, in New Zealand, compliance with the standard is mandated by legislation. AS/ NZS3551 is my bible, and most of what I do is prescribed in the document.
Not just fixer-uppers! It is important to recognise that the clinical engineering department is not just about repairing broken things, which is how many staff appear to see us. Clinicians and hospital
managers tend to relegate biomeds to lower ground floors, external buildings and out of the way places. Even in my own hospital facility where I work, we are on the lower ground floor, just down the hallway from the mortuary. We sometimes joke in-house about how handy it is given the age of many of my colleagues. Although we repair and maintain medical equipment, our job is much more than walking around with analysers on a cart, making sure that equipment works. We are the hidden force within the hospital, working behind the scenes of surgical and EDs. Not only do we provide a safety analysis on equipment, we calibrate and inspect equipment to see if a component is wearing out. Then, we replace it, preventing the need for emergency repairs that always seem to occur outside of normal working hours. I read recently that the space shuttle Challenger that exploded in 1986 resulting in the loss of seven lives and a billion dollar space shuttle, was caused by a faulty $2 O-ring. It reminded me of a piece of advice that an old colleague and NZIHE board member, Nigel Cross, gave to me. He told me that whenever I worked on a piece of equipment, I should remember that the next person to be attached to that equipment could be me, my wife, or one of my children. After the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, I can recall sitting at my bench testing intravenous fluid pumps, which is the bread and butter of what we do, and thinking that there must be something better that I could be doing to help out at the hospital during the time of crisis. In hindsight, this is probably how things should work in clinical engineering – it is an indication that our equipment held up well during a period of extraordinarily high use.
65
