Objectives: Phlebotomy and venous cannulation are common, technically challenging and potentially distressing procedures in pediatrics. The aim of this pilot study was to assess whether a novel medical equipment holder could be a useful adjunct for venipuncture in children. Methods: Doctors and nurses at a district general hospital were asked to analyze the portable medical equipment holder and...

Since no organization can have unlimited resources, strategists should decide on a strategy that can provide the greatest benefits to the organization. Decisions on strategy formulation commit the organization to produce specific products, work in specific markets, and exploit certain resources and technologies for a relatively long time. Strategies dictate the long-term competitive advantages ...

BACKGROUND We tested melodic auditory alarms recommended in the IEC 60601-1-8 standard for medical electrical equipment for ease of learning and discrimination, and for effectiveness during a timeshared task. METHODS Twenty-two critical care nurses learned the IEC 60601-1-8 melodic alarms over two training sessions more than a week apart, with or without mnemonics suggested in the standard. S...

Clinical engineering departments in hospitals are responsible for establishing and regulating a Medical Equipment Management Program to ensure that medical devices are safe and reliable. In order to mitigate functional failures, significant and critical devices should be identified and prioritized. In this paper, we present a multi-criteria decision-making model to prioritize medical devices ac...

This paper reports the first of several tests of new auditory alarms originally proposed by Block et al. [1] and formalized in IEC 60601-1-8 for use in medical electrical equipment. We test whether participants who are supplied with the IEC-recommended mnemonics while learning label-alarm associations can more accurately identify the alarms after short periods of learning. Results for 18 partic...

Residents living in long-term care (LTC) facilities are some of the most complex patients clinicians will encounter. Rounding on these patients can be made additionally challenging by a lack of appropriate bedside equipment, which can limit clinicians’ abilities to perform thorough evaluations. Because of this problem, clinicians may recommend transport to a clinic for further diagnosis and tre...

the reliability analysis of the medical equipments can help to increase the availability and the efficiency of the systems. In this manuscript we present a simple method of decomposition that could be easily applied on the complex medical systems. Using this method we can easily calculate the effect of the subsystems or components on the reliability of the overall system. Furthermore, to invest...

W Hurricane Sandy pummeled the northeast and mid-Atlantic states in October, uprooting trees and causing massive f looding, at least three large hospitals were forced to evacuate after emergency generators failed. Governors of 10 states declared emergencies and requested federal aid. As in the super derecho that swept through the Midwest and mid-Atlantic 4 months earlier, millions of residents ...

In this century, medical imaging is at the heart of medical practice. Besides providing fast and accurate diagnosis, advances in radiology equipment offer new and previously non-existing options for treatment guidance with quite low morbidity, resulting in the improvement of health outcomes and quality of life for the patients. Although rapid technological development created new medical imagin...