Outpatient Surgery Magazine

OR Excellence Awards 2016 - September 2016 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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• Point-of-use cleaning. Staff should wear fresh personal protective equipment (PPE) before preparing a bedside cleaning solution, as indicated by the solution's manufacturer. Only 79% of respondents say their staff members always don fresh gloves, eye protection and gowns before cleaning endoscopes at the point of use. Five percent of respondents admit that their staff never put on new PPEs before cleaning endoscopes in the procedure room. • Closed transport to decontamination. Staff must move scopes from the bedside to the reprocessing area in a closed container or drawstring sack. Nearly all of the respondents (90%) say their staffs follow this directive, but 5% say they never cover scopes for transport. • Manual cleaning. During this critical step, staff should prepare fresh cleaning solution in a sink for each endoscope, according to the solution manufacturer's written instructions for required temperature, concentration and water quality. Although reprocessing techs at 94% of the facilities adhere to that requirement, 5% of the respondents say their reprocessing teams "usually" follow that recommendation. There's a subtle but significant difference between "usually" and "always" when it comes to following directives for safe patient care — especially when you consider that contaminated endoscopes lead the list of medical devices linked to healthcare-associated infections. • Tech certification. All staff who reprocess endoscopes should be certified to perform the task, according to the guidelines. Fewer than half (44%) of our respondents say every member of their staff who reprocesses scopes is certified to do so, about one-fourth (22.5%) say some of their techs are certified in the practice and about one-third (33%) say none of their reprocessing techs have gone through advanced training. • On-the-spot testing. The guidelines suggest testing the effective- ness of your staff's endoscope cleaning at least weekly. About one- S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 6 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 2 9

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