Medical device educators and trainers are healthcare professionals who work to, promote the care and safety of patients, staff and carers, by ensuring that users of medical devices are fully equipped to safely use technology in the fulfilment of their clinical functions.
Represented by the national support body NAMDET (the National Association of Medical Device Educators and Trainers), these professionals perform a crucial role. Recently enacted regulations in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 - Regulated Activities Regulations 2014, places a legal obligation on Trusts to ensure that clinicians can use medical devices ‘correctly’. Trusts are required to prove how training has been identified and delivered on all devices to all staff and, during a CQC assessment, organisations may need to prove compliance and provide evidence of training.
NAMDET aims to assist members and their organisations by facilitating:
- Reductions in adverse medical device incidents.
- Opportunities for sharing best practice.
- Participating in training events.
- Cost reductions through utilisation of shared resources.
- Improving staff training and retention.
- Introducing recognised career paths.
- Implementing national standards for medical device training.
- Improving access to training tools.
- Provision of information exchange through its’ member network.
- Audits of Medical Devices Training.
The Association will hold its 5th Annual conference at the Birmingham City Centre, Holiday Inn On Thursday 3 November 2016.
Last year over 150 delegates attended the conference in Manchester and even more are expected at this year’s event. Attending the event will be trainers, medical engineers, risk managers and coordinators. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Training – Quality Care’. Among the many highlights of the educational programme include a keynote presentation by Dr Tom Clutton Brock, consultant anaesthetist, medical advisor, MHRA, on ‘Where quality Training has improved care – especially with Never events’. There will also be an insight into ‘Scan4Safety and what it means for medical device management’, provided by Sarah Jennings, medical device safety officer and medical equipment sister, Salisbury Foundation Trust; and ‘an update on the ECLIPSE Project’ by Professor Ann Blandford, UCL, London. NAMDET has worked closely with the MHRA for many years on a variety of projects and is actively involved in giving advice, reviewing guidelines and developing national best practice documents. The Medical Device Driving Licence (MDDL) was developed by the Devices Clinical team at the MHRA as a repository for certified training and to help keep medical device e-training information in one safe place. The scheme, which helps medical device users to assess and record aspects of safe device usage, is now managed by NAMDET and an update on this work will be provided at the conference.
NAMDET members include: medical engineers, nursing staff, operating department practitioners, medical device trainers, clinical skills trainers, medical device safety officers, risk and governance managers from NHS, voluntary and private sectors.For further details, visit: www.namdet.org
