Category Archives: Equipment

We need your help!

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By Dr Chris Denny
Auckland HEMS Medical Director
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Colleagues,
1. We are in the midst of prototyping our new clinical packs. And we need your help. Soon we will be flying in our AW169.
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It is five years since we last redesigned our packs – details are here.
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3. The concepts of ergonomic design remain current:
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a) Functional coherence
b) Facilitation of communication
c) Facilitation of task accomplishment
d) Adaptable space
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 4. We welcome your feedback. 
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 Here are two videos of our prototype packs (with our Clinical Leads for Ergonomics and Equipment explaining their design philosophy):
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And here are a few photos of the individual modules:
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IMG_0948
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IMG_0958
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The Airway and Ultrasound modules use foam inserts. This is a new concept for us.
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Your input would be greatly appreciated.
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Feel free to join us on Twitter: @aucklandhems
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MEDUMAT Standard 2 Ventilator

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By Dr Brendan Wood – Auckland HEMS Fellow, and Stefan Gabor – Intensive Care Paramedic, Clinical Educator

The ARHT has recently purchased the Weinmann Medumat Standard 2 Ventilator. The introduction of a modern transport ventilator will provide the service with additional ventilation and monitoring modalities to improve the care we can offer to our patients. In addition, our new ventilators will allow us to offer non-invasive ventilation which will be a new modality for many of our team. With additional capabilities comes increased complexity both operationally and clinically. The educational team will be commencing a simulation based curriculum shortly to train duty crew in the use of our new ventilators and in that context we would like to provide resources to maximize your learning. Please note that mechanical ventilation is a vast subject and education around this topic will be ongoing.

Click here to access the education package

Auckland HEMS app updates

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Firstly, thank you to all of you for your interest in and support of the Auckland HEMS app! In addition to the Auckland HEMS team, we have over 250 app test pilots from other services and locations, and have received valuable feedback about functionality and content.

Prehospital transfusion SOP

Prehospital transfusion SOP

The app has undergone a series of updates in recent days, as you may have noticed from the push notification spam appearing on your phones (apologies, this is an automatic feature that I have not yet figured out how to turn off!) The iBuildapp platform offers automatic updating on users’ phones, so you should (in theory) have the most up-to-date version already; if however the app is crashing I suggest deleting and re-installing it. Android users may encounter an ‘error 961’ when reinstalling the app, if so follow these instructions, or perhaps just buy an iPhone…

The most important additions to the app are the SOP and checklist for prehospital blood transfusion. As of today, Auckland HEMS will be carrying a unit of Whole Blood on prehospital missions.

 

interactive checklists

interactive checklists

Other additions include:

* Interactive checklists – Auckland HEMS checklists now include tick boxes that can be filled in as the checklist is completed. There is not yet a functional feature to export the data (this is a work in painful progress!) but in the meantime a completed checklist can be preserved on a smartphone by taking several screenshots.

* Expanded ‘resources’ section – a project has begun to turn the resources section into a prehospital and aeromedical reference library, with links to podcasts, video, and other useful clinical material. What do you think should be in the ‘resources’ section? Please use the feedback button in the app to let me know about your favourite resources so they can be included.

* Map feature with live tracking

Thank you again for your interest in the Auckland HEMS app, and please keep the feedback coming!

 

resources

resources

map feature

map feature

map feature

Usability testing of new Auckland HEMS packs

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By Dr Chris Denny, Auckland HEMS Medical Director

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New packs for Auckland HEMS

In the early days of Auckland HEMS, we loosely ‘bolted on’ our equipment to the existing paramedic gear. As time passed and we forged a strong collaborative relationship with our paramedic colleagues, the performance gap in our gear required a solution. One year ago we held an ‘Ergonomic Equipment Exercise’, led by Dr. Samantha Bendall (on sabbatical from Sydney, NSW). From this evening of pack testing we learned to focus on integration. Several design concepts guided our work:

a) Functional coherence
b) Facilitation of communication
c) Facilitation of task accomplishment
d) Adaptable space
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We are now testing our prototype packs.
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This testing will move through three phases:
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Phase I: ‘Kicking the tyres”
Phase II: Simulation-based usability testing (carrying the packs, winching the packs, airway tasks, vascular access tasks, splinting tasks,…)
Phase III: Live operational testing
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Here is a valuable website: www.usability.gov
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ARHT paramedic Rob Gemmell winches with one of the packs

ARHT paramedic Rob Gemmell winches with one of the packs

We are very keen to learn from the HEMS community. What are other services using? What works? What is the future of PHARM medical equipment going to look like?

Please share your thoughts using the ‘comments’ section below, or the  ‘contact’ button on the home page of this site.