Abstract
Due to the wide variety of equipment existing in clinical areas, there is an important question: which and how often electrical safety tests most be applied to the medical equipment. There are important differences about the electrical safety, such as the electrical insulation or the hazard considering the connection between patient and electrical instrumentation. The objective of this work was to develop an Electrical Safety Priority Index for Medical Equipment (ESPIME) involving different classifications related with electrical safety, in order to provide a numeric code indicating the priority and frequency for applying the electrical safety tests to medical equipment. The index were applied to the medical equipment in critical care locations and the result, were used to defined which set of medical equipment would be the first for developing and applying electrical safety tests in a private hospital in Mexico City.
I. INTRODUCTION
In today’s health care environment, medical safety programs are critical to hospitals as a means of addressing the issues of risk control and quality assurance. Furthermore, these programs, which involve the collection of data concerning various hazards and incidents and their correction, belong to the domain of the clinical engineering department. Electrical safety in hospitals today clearly requires that appropriate attention be paid to the electrical environment of the patients. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to implement a periodic maintenance check of all line-operated equipment and to establish a good recordkeeping scheme to keep track of tests conducted and the relative status of the equipment tested [1].
IV. CONCLUSION
To have a method to help in decision making related with medical technology management, results a very useful tool in activities such as maintenance and safety of the equipment, because there are wide types of equipment with complex technologies which require different maintenance procedures. In this way, the ESPIME provides information to the technical personal from the hospital clinical engineering department for programming services as preventive maintenance relates with electrical safety that most do in all available equipment in the clinical unit.
