Properly and accurately monitoring patients is essential in hospital settings. If hospital monitors are not functioning as they should, staff are liable to miss crucial data and make critical mistakes during a patient’s stay.
Perhaps the easiest way to avoid costly mistakes is to ensure that all hospital monitors are maintained properly. In doing this, it becomes much easier to prevent equipment failure or malfunction or immediately discover and resolve issues.
To ensure equipment in your facility is continuously functioning properly, aim to perform maintenance on patient monitors several times per month. Consider these tips on how to maintain hospital monitors for optimal performance.
Clean the Air Filter
Though hospital rooms tend to look clean, the air is a different story. The air filters in hospital monitors continually collect airborne particulates such as dust and other debris. Air filters are usually located on the back of the monitor and are easy to overlook. When left to collect dust over a long period of time, the debris can damage the fan, leading to higher internal temperatures inside the monitor and shortening its life span (thus leading to expensive replacement costs). Ensuring the air filters on patient monitors are cleaned multiple times each month prevents these failures and malfunctions.
Wipe Off External Components
While filters should be cleaned several times monthly, the external components, such as EKG and temperature probe leads, should be cleaned and sanitized weekly, if not daily. Not only will this habit ensure a safer environment, but it will also prevent contaminants from entering the monitor.
Empty Water Traps
The water traps on applicable patient monitors fill up during surgical procedures. Water traps should be checked and emptied after every single procedure to avoid overflow. Water traps with too much water could seriously damage the monitor and potentially ruin it altogether.
Recalibrate and Repair
Hospital monitors require recalibration and repair from time to time. Proper calibration ensures a longer service life for the monitor, and timely repairs prevent costly replacements. Hire a certified technician to provide calibration services and look to our professional medical equipment repair company in Atlanta to complete any repairs.