The need for specialist medical fridges is essential to provide the best quality patient care.
Providing hospital patients with safe medical care is essential, and this is an idea that remains consistent in both public and privately funded healthcare systems.
To provide this high standard of care, medical staff will often need to administer certain drugs and medication, that will need to be optimally stored in order to be effective.
Why Do I Need A Ward Fridge?
To achieve these optimal conditions, many hospital will install medical fridges in their hospital wards. These ward fridges are built specifically to hold all types of medication, and to keep these medications within their cold-chain conditions.
What is the Cold-Chain?
and +8oC.
If the medication stored within the ward fridge falls out of this range, it can be come spoiled and therefore unusable on any patients.
What do you Need to Think About When Buying a Medical Fridge?
With so many different sizes and specifications available, choosing the best ward fridge for can be a tough decision.
But it is a decision that you must get right if you are to ensure the vaccines and medicines stored on your ward remain in the cold-chain and are kept in the best possible condition.
To help you choose the best medical fridge for your ward, we have listed the main features you need to consider before making a purchase.
Size
Our medical fridges come in small, medium and large sizes.
Small medical fridges are perfect to fit under desks or sit on countertops. Because our small medical fridges don’t take up much room, an engineer will not need to come and visit your healthcare facility.
If your healthcare facility requires you to have ward medication on-hand and easily accessible, a small medical fridge can be neatly stored away for use at any time.
Medium sized medical fridges are around the size of a domestic dishwasher and, again, will not usually require an engineer for installation. If your hospital has the luxury of some extra room, and there is demand for high volumes of medication, this size could be perfect.
Large medical fridges are substantial units that provide a great deal of storage space for vaccines and medicines. Although they may require an engineer for installation, they are a great option if you need to stock high amounts of medicines and vaccines in your healthcare facility.
Solid Door or Glass Door
The next decision to make is whether you require a solid door or glass door on the medical fridge that will be located on your ward.
There are advantages to each. Solid doors provide added security against intruders, while glass doors allow you to see inside the fridge without opening the door and compromising the cold-chain.
Data Logging
Some medical fridges come with optional extras too, such as data loggers that will automatically record temperatures in real-time.
While manual data logging is always recommended at the beginning and end of each day, automated data loggers will give a very detailed picture of how the temperature inside the fridge is being maintained and how it fluctuates.
This will also allow you to see if the internal temperature of your ward fridge has dropped out of its cold-chain conditions, and alert you to this as quickly as possible.
Maintenance
One of the last things to consider when choosing the best medical fridge for your ward is whether to take out a servicing and maintenance plan.
While these often cost extra, servicing and maintaining your fridge is key to ensuring that it is working as it should be to prevent any outages.
An annual service also extends the life of the medical fridge which is often a substantial investment for healthcare practitioners and practices.
Contact Us!
By considering the above factors you should easily be able to determine which medical fridge best meets the needs for your hospital ward.
If you have any additional questions, please do contact a member of the CoolMed team and we will be more than happy to assist you. Contact us here.
