When it comes to healthcare supplies, clinical accessories play a unique role in promoting staff safety, a positive patient experience, and effective treatment. They have the power to enhance a machine's overall function—or hinder it. Poor-quality accessories and, in turn, poor equipment performance can consume staff time, delay diagnoses, and give clinicians inaccurate results, reports The Pan African Medical Journal.¹

Therefore, allocating purchasing dollars to high-quality clinical accessories can have a positive effect across a hospital's entire ecosystem. Let's examine how this is possible by reviewing a few areas in which clinical accessories contribute to excellent healthcare.

Accessories’ Impact on Patient Care

Research in Nursing & Health² found in one multisite study that frontline nurses reported frequent operational failures of equipment and supplies that "hindered care, eroded quality, and threatened patient safety." Nurses described how broken equipment or misplaced accessories forced them to lose time with patients as they searched for replacement equipment or supplies.

Study authors noted that this lost time could affect the nurses' ability to provide timely and safe care, as less time spent at the bedside often leads to worse patient outcomes. This study highlights just one way in which quality medical equipment and clinical supplies can impact the patient experience.

A less obvious way is through the use of dedicated-patient accessories that follow a person from admission to discharge. The fewer supplies a patient comes into contact with throughout their stay, the less chance there is of infection transmission. For example, when blood pressure cuffs work with a collection of machines throughout a facility, one pair of cuffs can remain with a patient as they transfer from one area to another, eliminating the need for a new cuff each time.

This requires high durability from accessories; they should be flexible and comfortable yet sturdy enough to stay with the patient as they move from room to room. Thoughtfully manufactured, high-quality accessories are more likely to include these features.

How Accessories Make Care More Cost-Effective

Healthcare supplies can be one of a healthcare facilities' top expenses. To deliver quality, cost-efficient care, budgets need to stay balanced. High-quality accessories, even when more expensive at the outset, are an investment. Purchasing less expensive healthcare supplies makes for a smaller budget item line, but those costs are passed onto patients—in more ways than one. Low-cost medical supplies and accessories might have smaller price tags, but their impact on clinical outcomes can be significant, according to Healthcare Purchasing News.³

The World Health Organization⁴ reports that the persistence of low-quality healthcare equipment, devices, and tools makes it more difficult to provide quality care and positive outcomes—in turn, this promotes higher costs for patients. Efficiency, therefore, encourages cost-effectiveness; tapping into tools that provide more accurate diagnoses and streamline clinical practices is not just better for patients, but is also more economical.

Medical Supplies Impact on Staff Safety and Satisfaction

The pandemic has added new pressures atop an already strained healthcare system. Shortages of healthcare workers, especially nurses, existed long before COVID-19. Working conditions may factor into this scarcity, reports the Journal of Risk Management and Healthcare Policy,⁵ including the inability to quickly access necessary medical equipment and supplies.

ICU nurses reported that the lack of equipment played a vital role in their job satisfaction. Research from Sage Open Medicine⁶ found that doctors and nurses spend an average of 6 percent – 9 percent of their morning and evening shifts searching for medical equipment.

Further, hospitals can be hazardous places to work, as healthcare workers are at increased risk for injury and illness each day, says the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.⁷ Choosing quality medical equipment and compatible accessories can help protect staff from exposure to health hazards. For example, GE Healthcare's AMSORB Plus⁸ CO₂ absorber is designed to prevent the buildup of toxins inside anesthesia machines that could pollute the surrounding environment. Harmless organic compounds emerge instead, protecting patients and staff from inhaling dangerous gases.

Maintaining a supply of high-quality clinical accessories that work in tandem with high-quality medical equipment is one of the best ways to ensure hospital staff have everything they need to do their job well. Imagine a surgery without anesthesia or a NICU without warming incubators—modern healthcare simply wouldn't work in the same way. Doing any job efficiently and effectively requires the right resources, especially for healthcare.