Outsourced instrument cleaning sparks debate
Released on - 10/04/2008
A request by the Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) to its members for information on outsourced decontamination arrangements has produced concerning results.
The Association, representing 8500 theatre nurses and Operating Department Practitioners across the United Kingdom, found that of its members who responded and who had experience of the outsourced decontamination arrangements for surgical instruments, more than three-quarters reported negative experiences.
Problems included patients waking up to be told that their surgery had not happened because instrumentation had been wrongly labelled while off-site, instruments were being returned with blood and bone clearly visible and the time taken for instrument sets to be returned was far behind the promised turnaround times.
Diane Gilmour, Decontamination Lead for AfPP, commented: “If we can’t rely on the very tools of our trade to be back, complete and clean in order for operations to go ahead patient safety is bound to be compromised. In some instances an operating list may be determined by which instruments are available rather than by clinical need and the fast-tracking procedures are simply too slow.”
The findings echo those within a report from the NHS Decontamination Programme which revealed that 1,765 operations had been called off at the last minute in 2005-06 because of instrument problems. The Programme’s latest bulletin admitted there had been ‘teething problems around instrumentation and tray processing which required resolution’.
Ms Gilmour continued: “When lost or broken instruments and mixed up trays become more and more frequent then patient safety is a serious risk and one which cannot be ignored. It is easy to dismiss these incidents at teething troubles but practitioners and patients need to be assured that realistic deadlines are now being set to ensure that these problems will be reduced to acceptable levels within a short space of time. Healthcare organisations intending to outsource their decontamination of surgical instruments need to learn from these lessons ”
Contact
Richard Cooper
Email: richard.cooper@afpp.org.uk
Telephone: 01423 856564
Fax: 01423 531613
