As a growing number of automated analyzers and data collection tools become available to bring electrical safety testing into the 21st century, biomeds may be thinking about making the switch from manual testing to help save time, analyze data more thoroughly, improve collection efficiency, or interface to computer software. As demands on biomeds— and on data collection methods—increase, automatic testing undoubtedly looks attractive.

We're interested to hear about any benefits your department experienced when it introduced automatic testing. How is testing data collected by automatic testers used as opposed to manually collected data? All things considered, is it any less work to use one method as opposed to the other? We hope you will leave a comment and share.

This week we welcome a best practice from Alan Gresch, the director of corporate clinical engineering, system logistics, at Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee. Alan recently shared one of his best practices for helping departments achieve excellence—and it’s all about honesty and commitment.

From Alan: “Be honest. As hard as those conversations might be, be honest with staff in all areas of performance. If there’s an area where they need further development, identify those things and put together a plan to facilitate it. If you don’t do that, you aren’t committed to that development and you allow people to be less than they’re capable of, and it promotes mediocrity rather than excellence.”

Our sincere thanks to Alan for sharing his wise words. Now, we'd like to know how you have supported and strengthened your staff, or what has a manager done that helped you? We can all benefit so share your ideas here.

For this post we welcome guest blogger, Ruperto A. Glaize, A CIV US USA MEDCOM, equipment maintenance, Womack Army Medical Center, who shares his best practices concerning use errors, based on his observations from working in small rural hospitals the past few years. Here’s what he says:

“As more and more of the equipment is computer based, your work force is less and less capable of using it. They want to turn it on, push one or two buttons, and that’s it. If someone accidentally changes one setting, most nurses are incapable of resetting the unit back to their perceived “natural” setting.

In the higher skilled areas (ICU, NICU, etc) the common use errors occur during crisis moments when the nurses are totally focused on patient care and are unable to step back for a second, process what the unit is doing or not doing. They would rather shut the unit down, disconnect the patient, bring in another unit, then reconnect the patient.”

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I recently received a notice from the California Medical Instrumentation Association (CMIA) about an upcoming chapter meeting where the speaker will discuss device development. Monthly association meetings often include speakers and/or training and sometimes the speaker’s company will host the dinner.

How does your association find its monthly speakers? How do you decide on the training? We’re hoping you’ll share your best practices and help other regional associations learn how to strengthen their offerings and attendance.