This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
The company is the world’s best bed head panel in hospital supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.
Disaster incidents leading to massive obliterations often bring to the forefront the inadequacies of the systems, infrastructure as well as personages. In healthcare settings, these imperfections are usually exhibited specifically during fire disasters. This case report details a true fire incident that erupted in a patient bed-head panel of an emergency complex room and describes the real-life challenges encountered by the emergency staff in preserving both life and property. Bed-head units encompass both electrical and medical gases: a structural component quite common in modern hospitals. Precautionary measures should be implemented to mitigate such incidents, as well as specific attention, should be made during the designing and installation of these bed-head panels. Better coordination, scheduled training, and fire drills can improve the overall outcomes and minimize the possibility of these potentially fatal problems, thereby, making a safer healthcare environment for every worker and patient.
Disasters whether floods, earthquakes, cyclones, droughts, or extensive fires have a strange ability to bring to the forefront the inadequacies of the systems, structures, processes as well as of people leading to massive obliterations. These imperfections get accentuated very often when a particularly serious incident happens.[1,2] In healthcare settings, these imperfections are exhibited usually during fire disasters. To mitigate these crises situations, healthcare professionals have to be proactive, swift, and alert always. They have to demonstrate courage and a sense of duty during rescue efforts.
In healthcare settings, the origin for a majority of these fire incidents has been electricity linked causes, specifically along the bed-head side of the patient care areas, as these areas have rich oxygen density, equipment complexity, web of cables, abundance usage of highly inflammable chemicals, and hand sanitizers.[3,4,5,6,7] Generally, a bed-head panel consists of modular sections (usually 4–14 numbers), for electrical supply to run monitors, ventilators, and defibrillators along with points for illumination, communication, and medical gases, liquids, and anesthetic gas scavenging systems. Though these bed-head units operate reliably and safely, yet leakage from these gases' outlets cannot be ruled out completely.[5,6,8,9,10] Similarly, there is always a possibility of either spark or short-circuiting in the electrical gadgets or outlets due to faulty equipment or sudden malfunction of the working equipment. Henceforth, the availability of an oxygen-rich environment, complexity of equipment, and highly inflammable materials may easily turn a relatively harmless spark into a flame and rapid ignition of materials.[6,7,9]
This present case study seeks to evaluate the root cause of a fire incident reported in one of the bed-head panels in the Advanced Trauma Center (ATC) of one of the tertiary care hospitals in North India.
For more information, please visit wall ward medical bed head unit.
The institute is a leading super specialty, tertiary-level, teaching, 2,000-bedded hospital with a 100-bedded ATC facility. The institute has a primed fire safety program with its fire department and a robust fire prevention system in place.
On March 23, 2021, at 1512 h, a fire broke out at level two of the ATC when the nursing staff noted a flame in one of the bed-head panels, and within a few minutes, the whole area was filled with smoke. Immediately, Code Red was alerted, and the fire control room was contacted on the dedicated lines. At the time of the incident, there were 68 critical/sick patients in the affected area and with the help of the nursing and security staff, all patients were immediately evacuated to the safe areas/gathering areas. The fire safety personnel doused the fire. The medical gases supply and electrical supply to the area were disconnected as a safety measure. The windowpanes and doors of the affected area were broken for the exhaustion of smoke.
The engineering and manifold services also reported within minutes to inspect the site of the incident. The immediate cubicle was sealed for repair and root cause analysis of the incident. After thorough inspection and maintenance work and due clearance by the electrical, biomedical, and manifold departments of the institute, all services were restored. No casualty was reported. No major loss of property was reported. The prima facie after thorough inspection and inputs from all the stakeholders, it was totaled that the fire might have occurred due to a spark in one of the electric points of the panel which had initiated ignition in the lint already deposited in the point overtime and was augmented by the leakage of oxygen from the oxygen outlet in the bed-head panel itself [ ]. A few such incidents have been reported by Sankaran K et al. in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the Royal University Hospital, Saskatoon, Canada, where the fire had been reported in the sealed cabinet enclosing the electrical wires and manifold pipes and the reason of fire had been stated as a spark igniting lint, allowing the cabinet's relatively fire-resistant materials to burn easily.[8] In the institute itself, two such fire incidents in the Bed-head panels have been reported earlier in the intensive care units (ICUs).[11] In the institute itself, two such fire incidents in the bed-head panels have been reported earlier in the ICUs.
Open in a separate windowHenceforth, after detailed deliberations and fact-finding, it was accentuated that regular cleaning and scheduled maintenance of these panels are some of the key factors for mitigating such incidents. Also, measures shall be explored to have the panels with segregated electrical and manifold units.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of clean room door requirements. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.