There was one school down south, that had claims of “hands-on” learning. I didn’t need so much theory, as I did getting my hands on equipment. This was a pretty big state school and they did not disappoint. There were some other things about the south I liked, such as the warm weather. I applied for reciprocity to practice nursing in my new state and continued to work as a hospice nurse while in school to pay the bills. However, once I was able to get my first internship under my belt as a BMET, the hospital I was in, wanted me to stay, so I immediately took a lower paying technician job. I did miss the money, but my new career freed me from so many of the burdens I experienced as a nurse. I still think nurses do not get paid enough.
I worked at that hospital system for a few years after graduation but felt the need to work near a different patient population. An old friend referred me to a new hospital, infectious disease that dealt with chronic and acute cases, some terminal. I felt that was my original calling so I looked into it. It was a smaller specialty hospital, but not new. They had just built a new facility with new equipment and closed their old facility.
Well, when I started working there, I realized they had a big mess for such a small hospital. This was surprising considering it was a new facility. There was a biomed equipment room full of faulty equipment, very little test equipment and just completely disorganized. It was obvious, they had not heard of BMET. They must have contracted the service out. It was nothing that I couldn’t handle. I immediately started inventory, purchased the right test equipment and began knocking out work orders. Most of the equipment in the room had nothing wrong with it. I chalked it up to I.D. Ten “T” errors.
Then I started getting calls to get the beds back in service. These were new beds that were purchased for the now 2 year old hospital. I had no room in the shop to work on the beds so I had to do what I could in the patient rooms. The nurses would make sure patients were moved to other rooms so I could work in peace. My first experience with these beds was toward the end of one Friday afternoon. The work order stated a hospital bed had moved on its own. At this time I didn’t think anything unusual about it. I figured a nurse, from this small hospital, had moved this bed from another room and somebody felt it was my job to move the bed back to its original location. When I arrived at the nurses station, I asked where the bed was located and where did they want it moved. At, first, they all looked at me like I was crazy. Then one of the CNAs explained that the bed would move to different positions, i.e. Fowlers, Trendelenburg, that sort of thing. I went to the room and saw the bed in a reverse Trendelenburg position. I proceeded to test the controls from the patient controller, the rails and foot board. I didn’t observe any uncontrolled movement. I proceeded to ask the nurse who submitted the work order and get some background information on the problem.
“Was there anybody in the room when this happened?” I asked.
“No. I had just checked the room because we were going to put a new patient in there? We had new linens put on the bed. I walked out to answer a patient call in the room adjacent, and when I returned, the bed was in a different position and the sheets had been turned over,” she replied
I continued, “So there was no
patient in the bed
when ithappened and you didn’t notice anyone else coming into the room?”
“No. Not that particular time. It did happen in another room while the patient was sleeping. It scared the heck out of her,” she replied.
“Has this bed given you problems before?” I asked.
“Yes,” She replied, “and so has several other beds. Before you got here, we didn’t have anyone to handle this.”
I immediately realized this was probably a manufacturer defect since the hospital was new; the beds were purchased new, and at the same time. I checked all the serial numbers and they were all within a range of numbers. “This is simple.” I said. They are all under warranty so I’ll just call the manufacturer. What I soon discovered is that the beds had been bought prior to the opening of the new hospital so they sat in a warehouse as the warranty period was consistently running out like the sands of an hour glass. So I had less warranty time than I had thought which would