tions. Sterile pro-
cessing's future also
includes the resur-
gence of ethylene
oxide (EtO) steriliza-
tion, a tried-and-true
method for prevent-
ing bacteria build-up
in flexible endo-
scopes. Here's a
closer look at how
new-school thinking
remains focused on
the old-school goal
of preparing instruments for safe patient care.
A new reality
Your sterile processing staff needs a high degree of training because
they're handling contaminated surgical equipment, and they need the
skills and knowledge to handle hundreds of different types of instru-
ments. You have to be confident that sterile processing techs can han-
dle the rigors of the job. Virtual reality-based concepts and augmented
reality can help on that front.
• Virtual reality (VR) lets you travel anywhere or be placed in any
situation. You might think about this in the context of the video games
that let you explore far-out worlds and outer space, but it also could be
used for training your employees. They can slap on a pair of VR gog-
gles and be in the back of a sterile processing department, standing in
front of an array of dirty instruments that require specific cleaning.
In this context, VR technologies should be seen as a wholly different
5 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A P R I L 2 0 1 9
• RENEWED INTEREST Experts are calling for the use of ethylene oxide sterilization to
remove bacteria from the tough-to-clean channels of flexible endoscopes.
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN,
CNOR
