Ensuring Medical Device Competence in Operation Theatre and Post-anaesthesia Care Unit of Joint Replacement Hospital Coxa

Abstract

As a part of nursing work, extensive knowledge, and ability to use technological solutions is a guarantee of a quality care delivered but also poses a risk for patient safety if not used correctly and safely. New technologies and medical equipment are adopted in nursing work fast and health care employers need to be able to evaluate, verify, and rely on their health care professionals’ competence. The responsibility to train and maintain the competence in medical device use is shared with the professional users (health care professionals) and their employers. The competence needs to be known and documented.

The objective of this thesis was to create an electronic platform for enhancing medical device competence of perioperative nurses and nurse anaesthetists in Coxa operation theatre and post-anaesthesia unit that would also work as a certificate and documentation for the organizations. To achieve this, service design methods and service design thinking was used. Methods such as gathering evidence as data analysis, doing benchmarking from other theses done in Finland and interviewing other units of operation theatre and post-anaesthesia units, utilizing persona creation and doing brainstorming session in unit of study. From these bases for a framework and a prototype for a Moodle course was created. Then the Moodle course including one medical device was created, piloted, and tested. Feedback from the testing was positive and need for changes could not be identified.

In conclusion, the method of using service designing methods and thinking to achieve the product was seen successful. The course in Moodle was seen as a good version on medical device competence passport and set a premises for later completing medical device competence management process with a framework it outlines. For further research, studying the setting of competence demonstration, how it should be designed and what could affect on performance in demonstration setting, would be, among others, an interesting topic.