By Christine de Kock
THEstate government last week gave the Western Hospital $700,000 for new equipment.
The money will be spent on patient monitors for the hospital’s anaesthetic induction room, the recovery room and day procedures unit.
It will also pay for monitors in the operating room.
Andrew Jeffreys, the hospital’s acting director of anaesthesia, said the new equipment was vitally important.
“The equipment is used in all stages of anaesthesia – when anaesthesia begins, during anaesthesia and during the post-operative phase in the recovery areas,” he said.
The director said the hospital would also use the money to buy a specialised anaesthetic monitoring device called “Bis”.
“It is probably the first validated technique of monitoring how deeply patients are anaesthetised,” he said.
“There’s a state that is known as awareness, where a patient potentially knows what is going on when they should be asleep. It is very rare, but this is one technique to decrease the chance of it happening.”
The funding is part of a $25 million state government package to be spent by public hospitals on new medical equipment this year.
