Volume 18, Number 4 ________________________________________January 2000

Message from the President

Happy Holidays!!

I hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays. The date of this greeting is January 1, 2000. I'm still alive and employed!

I hope to see many of you at the January meeting. We can share Y2K stoires.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has a very prosperous 2000. See you at the meeting.

Y2K

PM vs Repairs

Do you measure Preventive Maintenance (PM) time against Unschedule Maintenance time? This would be done over a long period of time, year vs year, and would include classes of equipment such as defibrillators, ventilators, sterilizers, etc., as well as your entire maintenance activity. The intent of this measurement is to determine if your PM efforts are having the the desirable effects of reducing breakdowns and unscheduled maintenance time.

Unfortunately, unscheduled maintenance time does not correlate directly to breakdowns because the time needed to effect the repair is influenced by the training of the service person, availability of service literature, test equipment, parts, etc. However, a general idea of the effectiveness of your program can be determined if you also keep in mind the level of PM being performed by your staff.

Many maintenance activities include performing safety inspections, operational checks and service provider best guess of the extent of preventive maintenance such as: removing dust from the interior, cleaning filters, applying a little oil or grease here and there, etc. We do these things for reasons other than preventive breakdowns. If you actually have established PM procedures (those things that when performed help to ensure the inherent reliability of the item) and they are performed consistently over the measurment period, are seperate from other procedures, and you trap the time separately for PM, your breakdowns should decrease significantly.

Additionally, you alson need to consider the reason for your breakdowns and whether or not they could have been prevented by some PM procedure. For instance, if the breakdown was because of an electronic component, there is probably little if anything you could do to extend the useful life of that component or prevent the breakdown. If on the other hand the power supply overheated and destroyed a couple of power transistors because you didn't clean or change a filter, then that would have been a preventable breakdown.

Determining the efectiveness of your PM program can become complex and time consuming. The problem can be further compounded by trying to compare your results against other organizations.

BMETs Web Site

Airshields 450 QT Incubator:
Loose Screw

The following problem comes to you coutesy of William D. Knight from the University of California, Davis Medical Center.

While performing my semi-annual checks on Neonatal ICU equipment, I have found the same critical problem four of these incubators. This problem is easy to overlook.

The screw is on the left side of the hood and secures the white plastic air deflector, which doubles as a guide and upper support for the mattress tray when it is in the extended postion. This screw goes through the Plexiglass and the left side hood support bar covers the screw head. Previous models had 2 screws securing the deflector/support, but now this is the ONLY one on the left front.

I found this same screw loose (to the point of disconnection from the air deflector/tray support) on all units of this model that I checked.

You can remove the four screws on the left side hood support bar to free the hood from the bar and gain access to this screw head. I used Locktite on the screw when I tightened it up.

You can test if this screw is loose by trying to wiggle the left front deflector/support at the front.

RECALL

Picker

Endoscope Public Advisory Warning

HP 78100/101 Telemetry

As a side note: Some non-HP receivers such as the Escort and other devices do display some non-standard waveforms such as a triangle wave or use other methods.