A Day in the Life of the Medical Engineering Team – Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital

Medical Engineering Teams What is the team’s name and role?

We are the Medical Engineering team, based at both the Children’s and Women’s sites. The department is responsible for the maintenance, repair and management of medical equipment within the Trust, safeguarding both patients and users from any risk that may occur while using medical devices. We additionally provide technical and clinical support to clinical areas. We have seventeen members of staff in total and over two hundred years’ worth of experience throughout the team, consisting of Senior to Assistant level Medical Engineers and Administrators.

 

How would the team describe a typical day/ shift at work?

The Medical Engineers spend their day responding to medical equipment repairs and servicing. There are over 15,000 pieces of equipment on our database to look after. We have over forty service contracts with external contractors to cover maintenance on the specialised equipment we manage, such as X-Ray machines or MRI scanners. The planned maintenance of equipment is scheduled for items throughout the year which takes approximately 40% of our time. 30% of our hours are taken up by the clinical support we provide, such as assisting in setting up Nitric Oxide equipment and in attending Laser surgery cases, plus technical support like helping set up Ultrasound scanners. The remaining 30% is spent repairing equipment and ad-hoc requests – literally anything that requires a screwdriver!

 

What’s an accomplishment the team is really proud of?

We feel we are a valued and trusted department within the Trust. The team has been instrumental in supporting improvements in the capital replacement programme, working with the Clinical Divisions identifying equipment that requires an upgrade, sourcing more suitable equipment, helping to get the best value from suppliers and facilitating solutions for the Trust.

 

Not a lot of people know this about the team’s work…

Until a person starts to work in a hospital, they have no idea that Medical Engineers exist, let alone know the broad spectrum of skills and help we provide. One day we could be working in theatre alongside the wider clinical teams assisting them to move temporarily by decommissioning and recommissioning equipment because fire-stopping work is required in their area.