Seeing a tidal wave of case carts. Listening to complaints from the OR. Rushing to process devices. It’s easy to forget the real reason sterile processing exists: The Patient. Join Karen Owens Director of Clinical Education with STERIS, as we celebrate SPD week and are reminded of the WHY behind WHAT we do and how sterile processing makes a difference to the Patient.

Objectives for this course are:

• Identify the “why” behind the role of sterile processing in patient care
• Discuss key practices that help sterile processing provide quality products to customers
• Explain the direct connection between quality processes in sterile processing and excellent patient outcomes

What’s in your water could be hurting patients. Poor quality water can damage devices, decrease cleaning efficacy, and interfere with disinfection and sterilization. Water may harbor bacteria or endotoxins that can have deadly consequences. Finding water quality issues and starting measures to correct them is a collaborative effort between sterile processing staff and those that maintain the water quality. Learn what makes good quality water and how to implement it for the processing of medical devices.

Course Objectives:

• Identify types and causes of damage to device surfaces that can impact patient outcomes.
• Name the levels of water quality necessary for specific steps in device cleaning, rinsing and steam sterilization.
• Describe the types of water treatment systems used in device reprocessing.

The daily journey of navigating the department's processes and meeting Customer requirements would be daunting if not for quality systems, specifically, quality management systems. A quality management system (QMS) can be viewed as the department's foundation and framework to include instructions, procedures, and resources to support quality management. Over the years, quality systems have matured into applications seeking transparency, reproducibility as well as Customer satisfaction as a result of systematic thinking, auditing and documentation. Today, health care facilities are credentialed by a number of organizations under the watchful eye of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS). These organizations will review a health care facility's documentation for completeness and observe the processes for which procedures and instructions are documented.

Prions are the protein-based, transmissible causative agents of a group of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (or prion diseases). Prion diseases present a unique risk because although they are not considered contagious they can be transmitted between patients via tissues and reusable medical device surfaces because prions are highly resistant to decontamination. Understanding these diseases is important in the development of facility policies to reduce patient and staff risks. Therefore, it is imperative the Sterile Processing Department (SPD), Operating Room and other department’s supporting clinical and surgical interventions understand these diseases when developing policy and procedures for the use and reprocessing of medical devices.

Course Objectives:

• Introduction to the prions and prion diseases
• Explain the risks associated with prion decontamination
• Review what steps a facility should take to review the risk of prion transmission on reusable devices"

The use of loaned instrumentation varies by each facility, but these days everyone uses loaned trays of some sort, at some time. Proper management and processing of these instruments is critical to patient safety.

Course Objectives:

• Identify the impact on patient safety when loaner trays are mismanaged and improperly reprocessed.
• Discuss IAHCSMM’s loaner policy and documents available to support implementing a structured process.

Are you interested in cutting the clutter and tidying up your sterile processing tracking system or instrument and set database? Profit from the benefits of a well-managed, clean database. Route out redundancies, inaccuracies, and other data fallacies with reports that make it easy. Include everyday management techniques to keep it clean.

Course Objectives: 

• Understand the attributes of a clean database
• Identify the four rules of master database management
• Recognize the types of reports that are most helpful for data clean