Knowledge and Practice of Preventive Maintenance of Anaesthetic Equipment at Muhimbili National Hospital and Muhimbili Orthopaedic Institute Tanzania

Abstract

Background; Anaesthesia devices are used extensively and make contact with many different patients on the daily basis. Maintenance, calibration and cleaning of these devices are of vital importance. There are many mechanisms for the control of anaesthesia devices and equipment. Routine maintenance is by authorised service centres, weekly maintenance by anaesthesia technician and daily checks. Checklist is always applied for the procedures or the maintenance is included in the automatic controls that are done by the device itself. The anaesthesiologist and anaesthesia technician are responsible for control of these parts at appropriate time intervals ensuring 6 month and annual maintenance requirements are met. Objective; Assessment of knowledge and practice of preventive maintenance of anaesthetic equipment at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) and Muhimbili Orthopaedic Institute (MOI) 2019. Methodology; Hospital based cross sectional study was done at MNH and MOI from June 2019 to August 2019. Data was collected from study subjects by use of questionnaires and checklist to the specific work stations. Sample size of 60 anaesthesia providers was calculated, but total number of 85 anaesthesia providers consented to this by study convenient sampling technique. All the anaesthetic equipment which in use were included. Data analysis was done using SPSS. Results; total number of 85 anaesthesia providers consented to participate in the study, and 28 anaesthesia machine were included, mean duration of practise of anaesthesia providers was 1.82 years. Around 51.7% of the anaesthesia providers had good knowledge on preventive maintenance, 33% of them responded that the preventive maintenance was of mutual responsibility of the practitioner and hospital management, higher cadre providers demonstrated good knowledge on the preventive maintenance compared to lower cadre providers with P value < 0.05. The most performed Daily checks was proper function of the suction machine at the beginning of the day 92% and the least performed check was setting monitors and alarms by 41.2%. The leak test in between cases was least done by providers mounting to17.6 %. More than half of the providers in the study (51.7%) demonstrated good practise at the beginning of the day and 61.7% had good practise in between cases. Only 67% of the anaesthesia machine was fully checked on all the aspects of preventive maintenance by the biomedical engineer. Conclusion and recommendations; Lower cadre providers lacked knowledge and good practice on preventive maintenance of anaesthesia equipment. Having a dedicated biomedical department has shown to increase awareness and the importance of annual preventive maintenance of the anaesthesia equipment. We recommend Training on preventive maintenance to anaesthesia providers, establishment of dedicated biomedical department at MOI and efficient implementation of the standard practice of planned preventive maintenance of all equipment.