Decontamination Principles.

Decontamination Principles.

a). Issues discovered is that the neurosurgical tools have been making their way back in OR. At the same time, unclean or contaminated, which can lead to infectious bacteria when a patient is undergoing surgery. Such tools are like colonoscopies and endoscopes, which fail to get proper sterilization before returning to OR. These errors occur at the “Sterile Processing Department” (SPD) that cleans and reassemble the surgical tools before and after surgery. Report from CPI indicates that the team is composed of laborers who are underpaid thus not committed to their duties. The team may receive little or no training. These teams may face pressure from nurses and the surgical team, thus making the process fast, which may cause the efficiency of the tools to backfire.

b). The team should be established to training and gain certification from any health certification Board. Perioperative nurses should help in facilitating decontamination and handling of the surgical tool and deliver the used instruments to the SPD. A good working relationship between the OR and SPD should get established by recognizing the SPD as part of the surgical team.

c). SPD should get organized and ensure that the used instruments do not mix with the sterilized ones. They ought to be committed and do their duties with passion; also, they should give considerable pay to their workers so that they feel satisfied..

d). Decontamination is the process in which surgical instruments after being used are cleaned and sterilized for re-use in surgery. I think the best way to ensure that cleaned tools get delivered to the surgical suite is assigning the perioperative nurses the duty to deliver them from SPD.

Sterilization Methods.

a). The wet pack is any residual moisture present in the sterilized instrument.

b). The wet load is the presence of moisture within or on several packages in a sterilized load after the shipment is cooled and dried.

c). There are three reasons why the load may be wet:

• Presence of water in the tray containing the load
• Wetness within the pack
• Visible moisture outside the package.

d). Kristine can perform some activities to ensure the instruments are not wet. Such as: Doing a vacuum drying, introducing “load heat up” to reduce condensate creation and installation of a heat exchanger to air in-bleed that will aid in the combination of air in-bleed pulses and vacuum.

e). These instruments, when moist they can attract microorganisms and bacteria that can affect the patient during surgery, thus making the work inefficient. Kristine should be keen to investigate the packs when leaving the SPD so that the wet packages not enter the OR and take them back to dry them.

References

Bucione, F. T. S. (2019). Implementando melhorias na área de expurgo de um centro de material e esterilização (Doctoral dissertation).

Ding, T., & Liao, X. (2019). Decontamination Efficacy and Principles of Electrolyzed Water. In Electrolyzed Water in Food: Fundamentals and Applications (pp. 17-38). Springer, Singapore.