Philips monitors

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Permalink Reply by Allen D. Slotterback on May 15, 2009 at 7:37pm

I have never used the Zoll, and therefore have no opinion on their monitors. Most services in our area have gone with the Philips monitors due to their relatively cheap cost compared to the Life Pak. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they are junk. The NIBP is consistently wrong, and compared to the Life Pak the EKG tracing itself is of lower quality and artifact seems to be more prevalent. I don't like the positioning of the wires all on one side of the monitor. At my primary place of employment we purchased 5 of Philips about 18 months ago. Since then each of those monitors have been out for service multiple times and continue to give us problems. I am not a fan of Philips and would suggest using an Etch-a-sketch before using the Philips.

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Permalink Reply by Streetmedic11 on May 15, 2009 at 7:53pm

We have the Phillips MRx--->they replaced the Zoll E. We initially had the same problem with overuse of monitor paper and constant alarms...these problems can be resolved by accessing the administrator settings (the password protected settings). Ask whoever is authorized to change these settings to turn automatic printing off for most events, except perhapse when defibrillating. The alarms can also be turned off by default. With the alarms going off, particularly in a code situation, hit the triangle button (left side below the screen)instead of chasing the menu prompts with the check mark button--->the amount of time this gives you depends on what was set as the default in the administrator settings-->this should make it a little easier on the ears until your monitors can be set up by an administrator. Another issue we encountered was printing full diagnostic quality in lead II--->this resulted in too much artifact on the single lead strips--->we print 12 leads in diagnostic mode and use the medium setting for single lead print-out--->there is also an "EMS mode" if the ECG is still unreadable (you can set the monitor display quality and the printout quality independently as well). Honestly, we were ready to kick these monitors to the curb until we realized that the annoying alarms, diarrhea printing, and scratchy printouts were not inherent to the software--->we just needed to have the default settings adjusted by someone with the administrator password. Hope this helps.

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Permalink Reply by blair4630 on May 16, 2009 at 12:51am

I would agree with an earlier post that it might be the rep, not the monitor. I dealt with Physio at my previous employer as I was the supply officer, and had no problems. I was surprised to hear someone say they thought the artifact was less on the LP12's. I always thought they produced some pretty bad artifact on a somewhat regular basis. In my area, almost everyone has LP12's. There is one service a county over that uses the Zoll M or E series. They love it compared to the LP12. Can't comment on Philips, never used one and have never seen a service in my region that does. Pittsburgh just switched to them, that probably doesn't help though, unless you know someone who works for Pittsburgh.

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Permalink Reply by Terry thomason on May 16, 2009 at 2:33pm

Working on fed grants just got back to this discussion. I appreciate all the input. I've got a number to Memphis Fire going to contact them.
Thank You.

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