Today was another interesting day out in the field as a medical device engineer. The sun was not yet risen when my alarm went off at 6am. With a quick breakfast and a strong coffee, I headed to Tamworth train station, armed with my test equipment and laptop, to board a train to London.
My outlook calendar (updated by the Planning Team) had informed me that I was booked to attend a hospital to exchange a faulty MR400 Philips MRI safe patient monitor for a loan device.
For those of you who don’t know, the Philips MR400 is a system that monitors vital signs during MRI scans, and is essential for patient safety.
My train pulled in at Euston station where I hopped off and met Mugundan and we embarked on the fifteen minute walk through the busy London streets to Portland Hospital. On-site we met with our hospital contact and we uninstalled the faulty patient monitor.
A courier, who had been tasked with delivering the loan device from Hugo, arrived and we exchanged the broken MR400 for the loan unit. The courier then set off to return the broken device to the Hugo workshop for the Back to Base team to fix.
I spent the morning working alongside Mugundan installing the loan device in the MRI suite. It's always a challenge coordinating with different teams, departments and engineers.
Often we can only remove and install or fix devices when patients are away from their beds for tests or surgeries and planning this can be tricky. But seeing the impact that a working device can have on a busy, pressurised ward is immensely satisfying.
With the loan device fully installed I completed the paperwork and returned home rather exhausted but fulfilled.
Tomorrow I am flying to the Isle of Man for a few days to work on a field change order for Efficia CM100 patient monitors.
It is this variety that I most enjoy. Often I work within a few hours radius of my home but frequently I am required to travel to different parts of the country (or even world) to carry out FSJs on assorted types of equipment.
Being a field engineer can be demanding, sometimes the days are very long, with a hotel stay at the end and not my own bed, but the diversity of challenges and the opportunity to see tangible results makes it extremely rewarding.