The weird thing is that the air pressure is measured in terms of the pressure needed to maintain a column of water x cm high. So, in my case the machine is calibrated for “13 cm of H2O”).

Does the NHS measure CPAP pressure in this same bizarre fashion? I don’t even know how this got started (though I understand the first CPAP machine was invented in Australia back in the 70’s).

In any case the goal should clearly be for all personnel in the medical professions to use true SI exclusively. Let’s hope that can be accomplished soon.

It seems clear that there is currently no effort being made to stamp out this potentially life-threatening practice; it seems crazy to me that when so many professionals (both medical and otherwise) recognise the dangers that nobody is willing to tackle the issue head on. While we all realise that politicians see metrication as a political hot potato it’s criminal that they’re so unwilling to act even when public safety is concerned!

I can’t seem to find anything about this repeat inspection much less the final report. Does UKMA have any information on these items?

Apart from making medically-oriented articles unintelligible for the man in the street (unless the units are dumbed down), there is also the risk that medical staff who think in terms of imperial units in respect of their personal lives will be slow to pick up errors (such as recording 572 kg instead of 57.2 kg) because “these are just meaningless numbers”.

There is also the risk of a figure-conscious nurse switching scales to show imperial units so that she can check her own weight, and then forgetting to reset them, resulting in a person’s weight being recorded as 128 kg rather than 80 kg (12 st 8 lbs) Following recent government announcements, this might well become a thing of the past due to dual-unit scales being prohibited in hospitals.

I still shake my head at the incredibly selective nature of their protests. But, of course, the government’s unwillingness to complete metrication is the real crime since most of the British public doesn’t seem likely to rise up en masse and erect barricades in protest.

When hospital staff are weighing patients, it doesn’t help the situation if they have one eye on the scale and the other on a conversion chart. It defeats the purpose of the metric only scale if they convert measures either via charts or by other means and refer to the converted results rather then the measured from that point on.

Experience, competence and a feeling for metric numbers can only come from daily use. If hospital staff convert then they will never obtain the needed familiarity with metric units and will be more prone to mistakes. Thus dosing errors will continue as will misplaced decimal points, as the errors will never be noticed due to lack of familiarity with the metric system.

Recording data in records in both SI and non-SI units must also stop and only SI must be used. Reading the wrong numbers on the record can be just as dangerous as making a wrong calculation.

Assuring that the language of the hospital is always SI is as important as making sure all the instruments are SI.