Hospital Power System

ProMbrooke:

Maybe this will work...

Chris Pearson:

ProMbrooke:

Maybe this will work...

That all looked a bit muddled.


I think that you need to know how a hospital works - clearly OMS does!


I fear that the use of electrocautery has led to a generation of surgeons who are not used to tying sutures (seriously!) but a lot of surgery can be done without electricity (battery head lights are useful, but they don't count) so oddly, in most cases, the operating theatre doesn't have to be no. 1 priority. Anaesthetists don't need leccy either - Triservice apparatus.

 

mapj1:

Very interesting, and not quite the same philosophy - in the event of failure of external power it makes perfect sense to cluster those loads you wish to maintain, and those you will drop, but I might have expected things like ventilation and maybe lights to be a mix of maintained and not, to reduce the load on the genset, but maintain a tolerable if not ideal environment inside.


The thinking for preventing large area loss due to a single fault in the building is not really quite the same over here either - if one of the critical group sub-mains gets spiked, or even if it just needs to be dead tested as part of a periodic inspection,  it is not clear how you keep everything else working, I presume there are other links not shown, or the final circuit sub-division is such that very small areas can be isolated quickly.

Chris Pearson:

ProMbrooke:

Maybe this will work...

That all looked a bit muddled.


I think that you need to know how a hospital works - clearly OMS does!


I fear that the use of electrocautery has led to a generation of surgeons who are not used to tying sutures (seriously!) but a lot of surgery can be done without electricity (battery head lights are useful, but they don't count) so oddly, in most cases, the operating theatre doesn't have to be no. 1 priority. Anaesthetists don't need leccy either - Triservice apparatus.

 

OMS:

I've never had to reach in and grip someone's heart and keep squeezing  - so I've no idea how I'd hold up TBH

OMS:

OK - what you call the headwall is typically described in UK parlance as the bed head, and is covered in HTM 08-03 - Bedhead Services


For each of your examples, I could map the medical gas outlets, earthing  points, lighting control, patient entertainment control, exam lamp and critical and normal sockets to a virtually identical set up in a UK or European Hospital


I mentioned the AIA Healthcare guides and the links to relevant NFPA and NEC Codes - and therein is the principal difference. Your USA experience will be based on a "by the code" approach - code says, you do. In the UK and Europe, we achieve much the same things but we use a much more pragmatic approach based on clinical risk assessment. We don't generally mandate number of branches, feeders, ATS etc - we just state the performance requirements (again, read HTM 06-01). From there we have a process of competent designers interpreting requirements objectives for a specific site based on particular assessment of clinical risk.


If we took a typical 500 bed acute hospital in the USA and in the UK, you would be surprised actually how similar the systems are - we just get there in a different way, which is generally quite normal based on the different approaches on either side of the Atlantic to many engineering challenges. Essentially, you guys rely on the "Code" - if the code says do it, you do it - we Brits however are more likely to adopt the approach of "Code is for the guidance of wise men, and the adherence of fools" - don't take that personally, it's just how we used to describe some of our American colleagues.


Regards


OMS