Caring for Your Defibrillator: Maintenance Checklist
Defibrillators can be rather tricky to maintain as they need to be constantly monitored for complications. To help make this easier for you, we thought it would be useful to put together a brief checklist of all of the things that you’ll want to review to ensure that your defibrillator is in good working condition. If this is something that you want to learn more about, read on for a maintenance checklist that will help you care for your defibrillator.
Pads and Battery Check
An automatic external defibrillator is a professional piece of equipment that must be cared for properly. Pads and batteries should be changed every two years, and they must be changed after each use. These should be purchased separately if needed. If a defibrillator is not labelled with the date it was last serviced and a list of inventory for the kit, it can be put out of service for being unlicensed.
Defibrillator pads and batteries typically have a shelf life of 2-5 years. There is usually an expiry date printed on them; when that date has passed, make sure to dispose of them properly in accordance with local regulations.
Display Checks
Defibrillators will test themselves regularly to make sure that the components of the device are working as expected. Most defibrillators have a display that indicates whether a test was passed or failed. Others use green or red lights for this purpose. If a defibrillator fails a self-test, someone must look at it immediately. To do so, one has to pay for an engineer to review the device, or one could send it off to the manufacturer to be tested. If you choose the latter, you’d have to do without the defibrillator for a long time.
Depending on whether the self-test detected a complication and if a warranty still applies, a machine may need some parts replaced. It is recommended to check the display regularly to avoid errors being missed prior to an emergency situation, where the defibrillator may not perform as well as expected.
Full Health Check
Defibrillators need servicing by professionals regularly. Users are allowed to check their defibrillator themselves once a year, but sometimes they might not notice an issue that is not obvious. This is why it’s imperative to have a professional service on a regular basis to make sure your defibrillator is in working order. It could literally mean the difference between life and death
Defibrillators should be professionally tested once a year to ensure that they can diagnose a variety of heart rhythms, including irregular rhythms, and recommend the correct actions. These tests are a more stringent version of the checks that are performed automatically throughout the year.
As defibrillators age, this will become more important as problems will begin to arise if the devices are not properly cared for, or if parts are failing. Health checks can reassemble the data from self-tests, or from other tests, and compare it to prior data to identify problems.
Conclusion
We hope this article proves to be useful when it comes to helping you figure out how to care for your defibrillator. While this may seem like a lot of work, caring for your defibrillator properly could easily be the difference between life and death. Be sure to keep everything you learned here in mind so that you can keep your defibrillators well-maintained.
No matter how well you care for your defibrillator, there will come a point that it will need to be replaced. If you are looking for a reliable source of high-quality defibrillators, look no further than our life-saving selections here at Restart the Heart. We are your trusted defibrillator supplier in Australia, and we provide AED pads and batteries for all brands. Check out our online shop for more of our AED collections and their prices.