Fetal Monitors & Negligence

We have a number of fetal monitors in our labor ward, antenatal ward and antenatal OPD. One problem with the use in the labor ward is that the residents want to do multitasking. At the same time they do not fix the transducer to the maternal abdomen with a belt provided for that purpose. They either ask the patient to hold it in place and go away, or just let it be there hopefully stuck with the sound conduction jelly and go away to do something else. If the patient gets a severe pain, she might let go of the transducer. If it is left to merciful fate, it drops down on its own. The end result is breaking up of the crystal within the transducer. The transducer is then fit to be thrown away. But they carefully pick it up and put it back in its drawer, so that no one is the wiser. When the machine does not work, we call the company service engineer. He shakes the transducer in front of us like a rattle and it rattles like a rattle. Then he says, “Your people are not using the machine with due care. The crystal is broken because they dropped it.” We are forced to keep quiet and buy a new transducer because we are at fault and service must go on anyway. Yesterday we had a demonstration of a fetal monitor made by the same company whose machines already exist in our department and whose transducers our people keep breaking. The service engineer was there along with his boss who was doing the demonstration. We already knew all about the machine because we had machines similar to the one being demonstrated. “I cannot demonstrate the vibroacoustic stimulator because I don't have the pencil cells for it” the fellow said. “But then how do we know it actually works?” I asked. “OK, I will get cells” he said. Then he left the transducer he was holding over the patient's abdomen and turned to his junior to ask him to go buy the pencil cells. The transducer remained stuck to the patient's abdomen precariously, the jelly barely holding it in place. “See, you have done what our people do and break the transducers. You blame them for not exercising due care, but you use the machine the same way” I said. He just smiled. There was a major difference. The negligence was the same, but he would have made a loss had the transducer dropped when he left it. He made profit every time he sold us a transducer in place of one our people broke.