Electrical Leakage Measurements

by Julie Kirst 6/22/2009 11:44:00 AM
At 24x7 we are always interested in hearing your comments to posted blog topics. We’re also interested in your best practices on topics we haven’t covered, as well as questions on your search for answers to be more efficient. Veteran biomed Victor Sarmiento, had some questions about electrical leakage measurements. Here’s what he said:

“Through the years of sustained improvements in medical instrumentation designs, what do your readers feel, or what are their opinions on continuously conducting a regular electrical leakage measurement, a program normally undertaken by their respective biomed department? Most departments are doing this religiously year-in and year-out, in guise, or to justify that by doing so it ‘enhances patient safety.’ ” He added that as a result departments “allocate enormous amounts of time and manpower towards its implementation.”

Then he asks: “Can any justify the need for it to be done only during the first initial inspection and maybe every five years thereafter or after a major repair was done on the device? Do they really need to be done on a regular basis? Does it really help improve patient safety? What are your thoughts on this topic?”


We’ll all be looking forward to your comments and thanks!


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Comments

Posted by Donald Spinks, 6/26/2009 7:44:46 AM

Here, the hospital managers feel it is essential to know that the electrical safety is completed annually. It provides the comfort zone while dealing with patients and staff.I do not mind checking it. It doesn't take that long.

Posted by malik, 7/12/2009 8:47:57 PM

ESI should only be done after major repair. other than that i think it a waste of man hour. come on, let us think about it for a second, when was the last time you realy performed an ESI and it failed. we live in the 21 century technology where engineers spend thousands of hours inventing a machine and do you think they dont think about that.

Posted by J Scot Mackeil CBET, 7/13/2009 8:39:50 AM

Electrical safety testing should be redefined going forward. advances in design and engineering had solved many of the issues first raised by ralph nader. but we also have device for which ES testing will never go out of style. anything that holds pumps or contains fluids should always have regular ES testing done. any thing that nurses contstanly plub in and out of the wall sockets needs to have the power cord inspected regularly.
a well considered and common sense approach to ES is what is best. it should not be done "because we always did it in the old days". annual ES should be done on an (as yet to be developed) risk based criteria. IMHO j scot mackeil cbet

Posted by Al Prymula, CBET, 7/21/2009 6:35:37 AM

I understand what you are saying. Modern equipment is very safe. Items that are seldom moved, such as monitoring equipment could be justified for an inital safety and after service. I believe items that are moved about such as vital signs units and infustion pumps need to be inspected because there power cords are pulled from the wall outlets. Damage is more likly to occur. Right now, items are all coded with there "Risk Factor" . These codes would have to be modified so that items could be recoded accoding to there potiential for damage and damger to patient safty. That is something the folks that write the regulations would have to consider. safety rules have changed alot in the nineteen years I hasve been doing biomedical repair. As always, patient safety is our number one concern.

Posted by biomed, 7/27/2009 12:39:00 PM

what est are most people using?

looking to upgrade our antiquated ones, looking at Fluke's ESA612

Posted by Fred Jaramillo, 7/28/2009 6:21:26 AM

I have been in the biomed game for 25 years, and in that time, I have performed thousands of electrical safeties. The handful of failures that I experienced were equipment that was used in hospitals, but not made specifically for hospital use. ie lamps, computers, timers etc. I would be willing to bet if someone were to do a statistical analysis of electrical safety pass/fail testing, the probability of failure would be extremely low. The concentration of electrical safety should be on non medical devices used in the patient care area. Another area of concern for electrical safety is procedure carts. Carts may have numerous devices on a single power strip. The combined leakage is potentially unsafe. In addition the carts contain non medical grade monitors, computers printers etc.
Electrical safety should be performed but annual check on every device is excessive. Devices with recent electronic work should be tested after every repair.

Posted by Kim Woodhouse, 7/30/2009 6:18:00 AM

What if you are the only Bio-med tech trying to take care of 900 pieces of equipment? The annual electrical safety test may not take to long on one piece, but 900 gets to be time consuming.

Posted by Dennis Kennedy, 8/11/2009 6:29:30 AM

I have to agreee that electrical safety testing in most cases is a misuse of very valuable time. In a 24x7 story from January 2007 and reprinted in March of this year Arif Subhan wrote about JCAHO standards, item #5 Maintenance Intervals, states "in 2001 JCAHO removed the annual performance and safety testing requirement for medical equipment. This change signaled recognition that the safety and reliability of medical equipment has improved significantly in recent times." If we address it in our policy/procedures we can establish the necessity for this testing, obviously we should always perform an electrical safety check on any device after repair but to spend time looking for a device that you know is going to pass anyway seems like a waste of time. If it isn't working or is damaged the staff will get it to you if we all work together.

Posted by Dan HAun, 8/25/2009 7:10:03 AM

I understand that this proceedure may seem time consuming but in our large hospital (700 beds) we often find damaged power cords and a fair amout will fail the resistance test to justify performing this test. We have also found on rare ocassions that returning repaired equipment has failed due to poor Quality control at the repair site.

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