OET Reading Part B
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| Storage of oxygen cylinders |
| Following a recent incident in which an unsecured cylinder fell and damaged a valve, staff are reminded that all oxygen cylinders, whether full or empty, must be stored upright in the racks or stands provided and must never be left standing freely against walls, beds or trolleys. Empty cylinders are to be segregated from full cylinders and clearly labelled, so that an empty cylinder is never selected in error during an emergency. Once labelled, empty cylinders should remain secured in the racks until they are removed during the scheduled weekly collection. Cylinders must be kept at least three metres from any source of heat and away from oil and grease. Any cylinder found unsecured should be made safe immediately and the ward manager informed. |
| To: All clinical staff Re: Resuscitation training |
| A large number of Basic Life Support certificates are due to expire over the next few months. As you will be aware, staff whose certificate has lapsed cannot work unsupervised shifts until it has been renewed. To help colleagues avoid this situation, the resuscitation team has added six extra sessions during July. Places are limited to twelve per session and will be released on the intranet booking page at 9 am this Friday, so anyone whose certificate expires before 30 September should book as soon as booking opens. If you are unsure of your expiry date, you can check it under My Training on the staff portal. Line managers have been asked to release staff for these sessions wherever the rota allows. |
| Manual extract: Infusion pump blockage alarm |
| A blockage alarm indicates that the pump has detected resistance in the line; it does not necessarily mean that the cannula has failed. Silencing the alarm mutes the sound for two minutes but does not restart the infusion. The infusion rate must never be increased in response to the alarm, as this can mask a partial blockage and cause a sudden large dose to be delivered once the resistance clears. Kinks, closed clamps and trapped tubing account for most blockage alarms, so the whole length of the line should be checked before any other action is taken. If no mechanical cause is found, examine the site at which the cannula enters the skin. Only once the cause has been resolved should the infusion be restarted, at the prescribed rate; a pump that continues to alarm after these checks should be withdrawn from use and returned to the equipment library, with the fault recorded. |
| Extract from guidelines: Storage of refrigerated medicines |
| Medicines that require refrigeration must be stored at between 2°C and 8°C. The maximum and minimum temperatures shown on the fridge display must be read and recorded once a day, and the display reset after each reading. A reading outside this range does not always mean that the contents are unusable, as brief rises can occur while the fridge is being restocked. Any medicines affected by an out-of-range reading should be labelled ‘do not use’ and moved to a separate area of the fridge rather than discarded. Pharmacy staff will advise whether they remain fit for use once they have been sent a record of the highest and lowest temperatures reached and how long the excursion lasted. The fridge itself should be taken out of service only on the advice of the estates team. |
| Memo |
| To: All ward staff From: Chief Pharmacist Re: Electronic prescribing system upgrade |
| The electronic prescribing system will be unavailable between 02:00 and 06:00 on Sunday 7 September while the supplier installs an upgrade. Prescriptions already on the system will remain viewable in read-only form throughout, so medication lists do not need to be printed in advance. Any new prescriptions or dose changes made during this period must be written on the paper charts that will be delivered to every ward by Friday. Once the system is restored, these entries must be transcribed onto it by the prescriber before the paper charts are returned to pharmacy. The upgrade will not alter the way prescriptions are entered; the only visible change will be to the way allergy warnings are displayed. Queries should be directed to the pharmacy helpdesk rather than the IT service desk. |
| Guidance notes: Telephone enquiries about patients |
| Because the identity of a caller can never be certain, staff answering the ward telephone should not discuss a patient’s condition when first asked. On admission, each patient is asked to nominate one person to receive telephone updates; that person’s name and number are recorded in the notes, and enquiries from anyone else should be redirected to the nominated person rather than answered. A regular time for update calls can also be agreed with the nominated person. Before an update is given, staff should take the caller’s name, end the call, check the number against the notes and ring back, using the hospital switchboard where any doubt remains. Messages containing clinical information must never be left on answering machines. Enquiries from journalists must be passed to the communications team without comment. |