Medical Device Calibration When You Have No Time

The healthcare industry exploded overnight. Everyone has been concerned about their health and depending on your department, you may have had to convert your services to be on hand for COVID patients.

Keeping patients safe by reducing or getting rid of visiting hours may mean that you have to provide emotional support for your patients as well as physical care.

All of these things together mean you have even less time than before to do other tasks. Doing things like inventory tracking or keeping up with equipment maintenance and calibration can fall by the wayside. They aren’t directly related to treating patients, so it’s easy to skip them when you’re pressed for time and have too many people to help.

Reasons You Might Be Tempted to Skip Equipment Calibration

One of the biggest reasons you might be tempted to skip equipment calibration is just that it takes time. Depending on exactly what tool you’re using, you might have to wait for devices to sync to your system.

Skipping calibration means less downtime between patients. It means you can see more patients faster. It also means you can avoid the headache of messing with fiddly equipment settings, and might save you some stress in the moment.

Downsides to Skipping Medical Device Calibration

Skipping medical device calibration doesn’t come without costs. Avoiding this vital step means sacrificing equipment accuracy. You won’t know how accurate readings are, and that means you can’t treat your patients with confidence.

While you may also save time in the moment, the more equipment falls out of calibration, the more work you’ll need to do later. Before you know it, all your equipment could need adjustment and be unusable until you get them back on track.

How to Make Time to Calibrate Your Medical Equipment

The best way to make time to calibrate your equipment is to make it take as little time as possible.

One of the best options is to take a couple of seconds to calibrate equipment between uses. You likely already need to sanitize everything that comes into contact with patients. When you’re doing that sanitizing is the best time to check equipment calibration.

Sometimes devices take too long to calibrate on the spot, and sometimes you won’t know when that will happen. It can be a device-specific thing, or it could be simply bad luck. Create a plan for what to do when equipment takes too long to respond, and your medical staff needs to move on to treat other patients. This could involve handing off the responsibility to administrative staff, or bringing the device with you while you go to help your other patients. It all depends on how you want to handle the situation.

You also have the option to hire more administrative staff to help your medical staff with equipment calibration and patient scheduling. That frees up your medical professionals to focus on patient care without disruptions.

Asset Panda’s flexible platform can be used to help send reminders for equipment calibration as soon as employees check out devices. You can also use the asset records and files to detail care instructions, and when to take those steps while using each tool. Having detailed records like this can give your employees clear steps to take, even when everything around them is hectic and chaotic.