Nurses' perspectives regarding the use of medical equipment on the general wards at St. Luke's Hospital.

Abstract

The growth of technology in health care appears to be taking place at an extraordinary rate since the use of high technology once confined to critical care areas is now moving into the general wards. The purpose of this study was to explore nurses' perspectives regarding the use of medical equipment on the general wards at St. Luke's Hospital. The study used an exploratory descriptive research design to determine nurses' views towards the influence of equipment on nursing practices, identify what and how nurses learn about the equipment commonly used together with an exploration on safety issues related to equipment usage. Nurses' perspectives related to equipment maintenance and accessibility were also examined. Data was collected from a proportional stratified sample of nurses (n=160) working in the general wards within the hospital. A self-administered questionnaire formulated by the researcher was used to collect data. Validity and reliability testing of the tool were performed. A response rate of 97.5% was obtained. An interview schedule based on the questionnaire was also utilized to interview 23 ward managers. Qualitative data was analysed through content analysis while statistical tests were used to analyse quantitative data. Findings revealed that there is a high frequency of equipment usage in the general wards and overall it appeared that nurses feel more comfortable to use medical equipment while nursing patients. Most of the nurses perceived themselves as being competent in equipment handling while ward managers stated that medical equipment is used safely and competently in their wards. However, this study revealed that equipment training is not provided regularly for nurses and the most common method of learning was through another staff member. Most nurses learned how to operate equipment or its function but knowledge on equipment safety appears to be lacking. Several factors such as 'appropriate facilities', 'patient workload' and 'staff compliment' were prioritized as influencing medical equipment training. Nurses stated that improper equipment use could lead to serious consequences. Although several nurses agreed with the immediate reporting of incidents related to medical equipment and a larger amount agreed to report these to higher hospital authorities, there appears to be some reluctance in reporting. Most respondents agreed with the setting up of a medical equipment library since they seemed to know that benefits such as better utilisation of resource and equipment maintenance could be yielded. The results highlighted several management implications and a number of recommendations were identified. The development of a medical equipment management policy, which covers all aspects of equipment management while involving all stakeholders appears to be needed. It would be beneficial to evaluate current methods of equipment training for nurses in order to identify what changes could be done to improve the ways by which training is being provided. A new approach to equipment incidents could be the implementation of a 'blame-free' incident reporting system approach to enhance learning from errors. Finally, it was agreed that equipment management inefficiencies could be addressed through the introduction of a full operational medical equipment library.