Pat Testing Nursing Homes

Nursing and care homes have many portable electronic devices that need testing.  Like a hotel there are demands in the kitchens, administration offices, cleaning services, communal areas and in clients’ rooms. Additionally, depending on the level of care offered by the home, there also powered beds, lifting aids, wheelchairs  and other electronic medical equipment.  As always in a residential place, helping to avoiding fire is an important reason to test electrical items, as well as safety to equipment handlers and the efficient running and subsequent prolonged life of electronic items. 

The kitchens of a residential care home meet the needs of their community 365 days of the year.  Therefore, all of their equipment needs to be serviced and checked regularly to ensure that any breakdowns are kept to a minimum.  The portable electrical devices, kettles, food processors, mixers, blenders and other such electronic kitchen aids should be checked regularly to ensure that they are operating properly that their plugs and flexes are not worn or loose or in any way dangerous to their operators or giving the potential to cause damage themselves.

The cleaning needs of a care home are similarly always required, vacuums, wet cleaning machines for floors and upholstery, hard floor cleaners etc all need to be reliable workhorses.  They are subject to being pulled about and heavy use.  They should be checked regularly to ensure that they functioning properly and not in danger of overheating, that their flexes and plugs are secure and safe etc.

Many homes offer recreational facilities and other services for their clientele.  Computers, televisions, music centres etc are used by clients in a pleasure and learning environment.  Hairdressing facilities are often available with their hairdryers, straighteners, electronic rollers etc, all of which need to be checked for safety and reliability.

As well as the televisions, hairdryers, radios, alarm clocks, personal computers etc that clients may have in their rooms, given the nature of some of the clients in nursing homes there will be equipment such as orthopaedic beds, that can be set electronically for comfort, special lifting aids to help staff move bed ridden clients etc. Additionally, blood pressure and other medical reading equipment is available these days in a portable electrical form.  Clearly the effective and reliable working of this type of equipment is vital and regular PAT testing helps to keep items safe and efficient.

The administration of any large institution these days uses computers, printers, shredders, desk lamps, franking machines, electronic scales and other portable electronic office equipment.  All this will need regular checking, even if not as frequently as the more heavily used electronic machinery such as kitchen aids, vacuum cleaners or medical electronic equipment.  The home’s health and safety officer can discuss with a PAT testing company a full list of items to be tested and how frequently in each case.  This would be in addition to the home’s own visual checks of equipment on a regular and frequent basis.