Senior Clinical Engineer in Northampton

The post holder will provide comprehensive medical device maintenance, repair, commissioning and management services to a wide range of clinical specialties. Assist in the whole life management and support of all medical devices across Northampton General Hospital.

Other responsibilities include:

• Providing support services to one or more specialist areas e.g. Critical Care, Theatres, Radiotherapy, Diagnostic imaging, Special Care Baby Unit, Renal, etc.
• Train and advise nursing and other staff in the safe use of medical devices.
• Organise and update service, operation and instruction procedures.
• May supervise other technicians.
• Provide effective input into the work of the Trust, to support the achievement of our vision and values.

Main duties of the job:

• Perform a wide range of technical duties, mainly guided by procedures involving autonomous work on highly complex medical equipment in the clinical and workshop environment to ensure the optimum effectiveness, reliability, availability and safety of medical devices.
• Investigate and test medical devices, analysing the results to diagnose faults or problems and rectify them.
• Communication of investigation results to users, colleagues and suppliers, sharing knowledge and experience.
• Using primarily computerised systems, make accurate equipment maintenance history records and other information supporting audit, quality and performance monitoring.
• Supervising other technicians when required, to ensure all aspects of the service are delivered in an efficient, safe, professional and organised way according to departmental policies, procedures and Health and Safety documentation.
• Liaise with medical device suppliers to obtain technical and commercial information in relation to equipment maintenance and evaluation.
• First line support of instrumentation interfaces to specialist clinical computer systems, liaising with IM&T to resolve problems as necessary.
• Monitor stocks and initiate orders.
• Comment on, and propose changes to, departmental procedures and develop planned maintenance schedules.
• Complete and review equipment and job audits.
• Contribute to organised training of technical, medical, nursing staff and patients in the proper care and use of medical devices.

Analytical and Judgmental:

• To play a pivotal role in ensuring governance excellence in the use, training, maintenance and support of medical devices.
• Analyse complex problems, situations and information, making informed judgments and formulating solutions and recommendations for the continual improvement of patient safety.
• Conduct risk assessments involving safety issues relating to medical devices.
• Identify equipping deficiencies and ensure that they are fed into the equipment replacement program.

Communication:

• Communicate to individuals, medical device information which will include policy changes, new policies, guidelines and regulations.
• Communicate sometimes unwelcome information regarding clinical technical issues, policy and service delivery issues with staff, suppliers and outside agencies.
• Provide input where appropriate in any discussions relating to equipment management.
• Communicate with suppliers and all external bodies as necessary.
• Communicate with internal and external auditors, the Health and Safety Executive.

Planning & Organisation:

• Plan, prioritise and organise a range of activities relevant to own remit.
• Provide support to the Head of Clinical Engineering in medical device management across the Trust.
• Utilise and analyse data from audits and provide suggestions that may lead to improvements in management of medical devices.
• Support and supervise junior colleagues or students on placement.

Policy, Protocol & Service Development:

• Contribute to medical device policies and procedures and support the implementation of any changes in these policies.
• Participate in other departmental policy development at senior departmental meetings.
• Contribute to the development of written procedures for all aspects of the work within the medical devices remit.
• Responsible for ensuring that clinical staff are informed of and encouraged to adhere to Trust policies and procedures.

Responsibility for Information Technology:

• Responsible for the operation of all manual and computerised information systems relating to medical equipment management.

Responsibility for Research and Development:

• Contribute to the formal benchmarking audits programmes both internally and on other sites participating within the scheme.
• Support investigations arising from the Trust’s Clinical and Adverse Incident reporting system (Datix).
• Propose corrective action plan, to prevent reoccurrence.

Other responsibilities:

• Provide cover for colleagues as appropriate.
• Assist in producing ad hoc reports and in project work.
• Maintain own Continuing Professional Development.
• Represent the Trust at appropriate external bodies.
• Maintain expertise in medical device use and safety issues.

Qualifications:

• HNC/HND, B.Eng or BSc. in a physical science or electronic engineering subject or equivalent vocational qualification.
• A range of relevant technical training course, OEM or approved supplier.
• Contemporary knowledge of analogue and digital electronics and associated fault-finding techniques.
• Eligible for membership of an appropriate professional institute.

Knowledge & Experience:

• Post qualification technical experience in repair and maintenance of medical equipment at a band 5 or 6.
• Experience in scheduling and providing a maintenance and repair service for a wide range of medical equipment.
• Contemporary technical knowledge in application and use of electro medical equipment.
• Working knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology.
• Familiarity with Health & Safety at Work and other related legislation.
• Sound grasp of Medical Device management guidance.

Skills & Abilities:

• Ability to integrate within a team of staff working with a wide range of medical devices.
• Good communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to organise own workload.
• Able to use standard office and bespoke software applications.
• Understanding of the principles of risk management and incident investigations.