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David Saikin - I'm in charge of the Isensix monitoring system for the entire lab, histology, and microbiology so I review logs at least weekly plus get paged for every every 2nd level and 3rd level alarm (email for 1st level). Staff know if they don't respond, even in the middle of the night, I will call them. Plus our hospital made it a requirement for Joint Commission readiness to have a report of all alarms and accordance to responding to the alarms so I have to look at it at least monthly.

Just curious but has anyone thought to ask the timer manufacturer their thoughts replacing batteries? Personally I don't think I would be overly concerned with the need to calibrate a digital time simply because I changed the battery. Also, "However, the batteries have all died prematurely." What makes you think that the batteries died prematurely? Did the manufacturer indicate that the batteries would last the calibrations period? If they didn't want you to replace the batteries they would probably make them inaccessible. Just a couple of thoughts.

Actually, I'm not suggesting that replacement of the batteries is cause to re-qualify a timer. Accuracy of most timers is not affected by battery replacement because there is no actual CALIBRATION, i.e., no adjustment process. Typically, today's timers are CERTIFIED - their accuracy is verified against a standard. That accuracy is independent of the batteries. But, I do agree that a broken/unreadable timer is the ultimate expression of "inaccurate".

After validation studies are done, why wouldn't one or two comparisons be sufficient?