All staff that use or work with medical devices have a level of responsibility to ensure the safety of patients and colleagues, as per the Trust policy ‘Medical Devices Management’ and the MHRA ‘Managing Medical Devices – guidance for healthcare and social services organisations’ April 2015.
Staff that are authorised to use a piece of equipment as part of their job role must ensure they are trained, confident and competent before using that equipment. Drop in events, for the medical devices training, are organised every month at alternating sites. These dates are pre-planned for 2016 and can be found on the medical engineering website.
These events are advertised on the website, the Trust intranet noticeboard, the equipment libraries, the noticeboard by the dining room at HRI and via email to all department/ team managers and link nurses. Specialised training events are also organised separately, as are link nurse training events and these are advertised in the same way.
All evidence of training is entered onto the medical devices training database whilst the physical evidence i.e. competency forms are kept in the medical devices training folder in the department/ ward/team office.
The department manager/ Sister or Link nurse have access to the medical devices training database and are able to see which staff are authorised to use equipment, when they were last trained and when the training is due to be updated. They are also able to add and remove staff or devices from their work areas and update training records when required.
Each department/ team should have a medical devices training folder. This folder should contain a database report for the work area that demonstrates their staff, devices and training. Each member of staff should then have a separate section within that file which contains their individual staff report from the database and all their training records/ competency.
An annual audit is sent to all areas on the database to evaluate the training needs analysis of each work area and ensure the database remains as accurate as possible. The team/ department managers are able to identify on this form which staff are authorised to use the devices, the medical devices training team are then able to highlight these authorisations on the database to ensure accurate reporting.
Divisional/ departmental training compliance reports are produced and forwarded each month to all areas, matrons and general managers. These reports are also fed into the Health and Safety committee, Medical Devices Management Group and the Board.
The Medical Engineering website on the staff intranet has information for any upcoming training events and has a valuable resource of user manuals, quick guides, competency assessment forms, videos and on line training. This can be accessed via the link below;
If you require any further information, would like training or would like to become a link trainer please feel free to get in touch, thank you J
Jayne Blakey Brian Bottomley
Medical Devices Training Coordinator, Training Support Officer
Jayne.blakey@cht.nhs.uk or HRI 5782 brian.bottomley2@cht.nhs.uk or HRI 2108