The supplied flashlights at my place of work

I work as a senior nurse in the O.R. department (Operating theatre to those of you from the UK) of a fair sized general hospital. My place of work is quite large consisting of 9 operating rooms with all of the associated office space/consulting rooms and storage space. During a night shift we turn most of the lights off, usually just keeping one O.R lit and a single bay in the recovery room.
This makes for good working conditions if you are a budding flashaholic A straight 50m corridor and lots of totally dark 'whitewall' rooms. I couldnt ask for more!

Anyway, I decided to investigate the departments emergency lighting situation. Obviously the hospital has a back up generator which kicks in in event of a power failure, it takes about 5 seconds to react and is tested frequently. However this power is for essential use only and leaves office/storage space in the proverbial dark. Since many of our rooms do not have windows the hospital has kindly supplied some torches for us to use.

There can be up to 60 workers in my department at any one time

Guess how many flashlights. Go on, have a guess.

Nope, not that many.


Two. Two flashlights. Unbelievable.

Two 6v lanterns, one of which had a leaky battery and didnt work at all and the other one produced the ghost of a beam for about 30 seconds before fading totally. Hmmmm.
With a bit of a sigh I realised that the department actually had at least 4 working flashlights within its walls, all of them mine. 2 on my person, one in my bag and one in my locker.
Hell, looks like I'm the 'flashlight guy'

I'm going to try and convince the bean counters that a modest investment in some torches may just help to avert a tragedy. At the very least I'll get two replacement lanterns sorted out

BTW the lights I have at work are a Princeton Tec Rage and a Photon carried on my keychain, a Minimag with Nite ize drop in in my bag and a 3D Mag with a Diamond 3w drop-in LED in my locker. I also bring other lights to work to test (Play with). I love shining the ROP down a blacked out 50m corridor

Simon

Hi there, SimonSays,


No, it doesn't suprise me at all. I live in London and recently had to spend some time in hospital with a cellulitis in my right leg which they were giving me IV antibiotics. It wasn't the mixed wards or lack of time spent cleaning up the beds for new patients to come into that suprised me. Nor was it the total lack of auxilliary staff to actually clean under the beds. Or even the fact that only two qualified nurses and two students looked after six rooms of six patients all through the night.

It was, however the fact that in order to see the readings on my BP and the guage on the IV machine, or to fit a new canula, the night nurse switched on the main ward lights each time - at two and five in the morning!

After the second day I wore my ARC AAA-P around my neck and just as he was about to turn on the ward lights, I offered him the light for his rounds.

He looked pleased as punch and he always gave it back promptly.

Is this lack of forsight on the NHS to supply them with penlights or to fix the low light bulbs over everyone's beds...or is it just a good humoured nurse doing their best to appease an obviously deranged and badly addicted Flashoholic???

I'd just like to know...


Be lucky...

Incidentally, I have disinfected the ARC since!!! (My brother's a surgeon and he insisted I throw it away...they just don't understand!)

in order to see the readings on my BP and the guage on the IV machine, or to fit a new canula, the night nurse switched on the main ward lights each time - at two and five in the morning!

That really sucks. Nurses who work night -should- have a torch of sorts even if its just a penlight to test a patients pupil response. Nope, the NHS doesnt supply you with one but disposable penlights can usually be scammed from medical and drug reps if you ask 'em nicely. Showing a genuine interest in their product helps too .

A £1 photon clone hung on the same lanyard as an I.D. badge would probably cover 99% of a night nurses needs.

Go figure

Cheers,
Simon

Most of the Nurse's Stations at the hospital that I work at usually has atleast one or two lights sitting on the counter for them to use. Too bad they are all those $2 plastic incans, the 2XD type. I remember I was in one unit and one of the nurses was telling me about these new flashlights they got (2XAA plastic incan) and how they thought that was cool because their old lights sucked. I showed them my Surefire M3 and told them they needed one of those. They liked the M3 but freaked and allmost sent me to the psych unit when I told them how much it cost.

Perhaps the cheap flashlights are there because better ones tend to disappear? That seems to be rather common in workplaces these days with employees taking such items home (especially if they are not used frequently and may not be missed for a while.) I even know of a couple of police departments that issues each of their officers their own SL-20X and only supplies the cradle in the radio car. Seems that they have less lights going MIA this way than when the lights were communal equipment.

Aaron1100us said:

Most of the Nurse's Stations at the hospital that I work at usually has atleast one or two lights sitting on the counter for them to use. Too bad they are all those $2 plastic incans, the 2XD type. I remember I was in one unit and one of the nurses was telling me about these new flashlights they got (2XAA plastic incan) and how they thought that was cool because their old lights sucked. I showed them my Surefire M3 and told them they needed one of those. They liked the M3 but freaked and allmost sent me to the psych unit when I told them how much it cost.

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simonsays said:

I'm going to try and convince the bean counters that a modest investment in some torches may just help to avert a tragedy. At the very least I'll get two replacement lanterns sorted out

Click to expand...

Don't forget the LEAKY BATTERIES.

Actually that is the hard part. Getting a policy change so flashlights are checked regularly and batteries replaced just like fire extinguishers, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

At least the fire extinguishers and smoke/CO detectors generally require periodic checking and maintainance by local ordinance, as does fixed emergency lighting for power outages. Flashlights are generally checked at all until after the lights go out.

During a power outage at one local company, it was found that 90% of the plug-in rechargeable lights that they had distributed throughout the building did not work (of course, they had been plugged in for something like 5-6 years!) Fortunately, there were only a few employees in the building.

LEDninja said:

Don't forget the LEAKY BATTERIES.

Actually that is the hard part. Getting a policy change so flashlights are checked regularly and batteries replaced just like fire extinguishers, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

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I've mentioned this in another thread, but around here the "shakelights" have started turning up in dollar stores, and one convenience store has "squeeze" generator lights (keep meaning to buy out their stock - great Christmas gifts) with 3 LEDs for 3 bucks each. Using "non-battery" lights for emergency purposes would eliminate the maintenance issue. Of course, so would the use of lithiums (especially the 1.5V Eveready AAs), but that would be a more expensive solution, and would run the risk of finding out during a power failure that the lights had leaky carbon-zinc cells (the good ones having "walked").

Many of the "non-battery" lights are a misnomer. They actually do have batteries, which are charged by whatever motion is used (shaking or cranking.) As with any rechargeable battery, these require regular maintenance and service and those that have LIon rechargeable batteries have a limited life.

Those crank lights that you see, usually have a coin-sized 3.6V LIon battery that gets charged from the cranking. Like all rechargeable LIon batteries, their useful life, if maintained, is about 3 years.

rwolff said:

Using "non-battery" lights for emergency purposes would eliminate the maintenance issue.

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Same here. See

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=126226

and

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1503125#post1503125

for (my experiences with) more of the unenlightened but employed.

In my hospital the available flashlights are:
- innumerable 2AAA penlights for pupil responses, night shifts and peaking into any bodily cavity you need to as a doctor or nurse
- two SL Stingers for wound inspection an precision work
- a SL Litebox for blackouts (used it once)

Lately I've been giving out single AAA single LED lights from Dae's as presents to my colleagues. They like them!

By the way, the observations about not cleaning properly in the wards are applicable here also.

Kees

I gave all my RN colleagues a SL Stylus after I wiped out all the local Radio Shack's supplies. I EDC my Gladius and have used the low setting for assessing pupil response, wound assessment, etc. (Slowly people are realizing it's a light and not a baton or pepper spray!) . I keep extra 123A's stashed all around the office (thanks to Battery Station).

The hospital bought 4 SL Strions after the 2003 blackout, to augment the useless 2d incan's. Not much for a place with over 400 clients.

Though many of the shake lights do use a battery - some of the more expensive ones use a capacitor to store the charge. From what I understand, these will work for a long time with little maintenance. I have 2 good quality shake lights and 2 crank lights. The shake lights with the capacitors are way better than the batteryless crank lights (they only work while being cranked). I actually needed to use the crank light one night to look for something in the dark and it was next to impossible - the light moves with each crank. With the shake light, the capacitor stores the charge, allowing you to use it like a normal flashlight.

With all of that being said, I now edc an HDS U60 (bought my wife an Arc AAAP to edc) - and will never go back. The light from the shakelight was just barely usable. It would be good in an SHTF situation where batteries are non existant (and my stock has been depleted) - but the HDS and Arc are way more useful for everything else.

simonsays said:

disposable penlights can usually be scammed from medical and drug reps if you ask 'em nicely.

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Whoo! You've sparked a memory there. I think my first 'proper' torch was a penlight that my father got from a drug company rep back in the late sixties (My Dad was a doc'). a little two AA number where you press the clip for momentory on. I LOVED that light!! I think I modded it to red with some quality street wrappers - red is better for playground sonic screwdriver zapping!!

There ya go, 'Drugs lead to Flashaholism in young impressionable boy!' That's a headline for the Daily Mail Surely!!

Don't forget to wash your hands!



Be lucky...


PS I even remember the drug, tamoxifen I think or something...