DECONTAMINATION
Preventing endoscope contamination
The Why, What and How of Endoscope Decontamination took place at the Postgraduate Centre, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. The British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) study day was aimed at staff who undertake the day-to-day practice of endoscope decontamination. Alec Peachey reports.
Why, What and How? When it comes to endoscope decontamination these principles are key to ensuring the health and safety of patients and staff.
The event offered an opportunity for healthcare professionals working in this field to learn from some expert speakers. After all learning is the key and this is particularly true in the medical sector as the knowledge gained by staff at these types of events is often shared and used to help improve the lives of patients. At the event, which was sponsored by Cantel, Wayne Spencer - authorising engineer (decontamination) at Spencer Nickson Ltd – kicked off proceedings with a presentation entitled ‘Decontamination legislative requirements’. During his presentation, which covered the ‘Why’ theme, he outlined the reasons for
preventing endoscope contamination: l To protect the patient from disease/death. l To protect staff from disease. l To protect staff from litigation/dismissal. l To protect the organisation’s reputation/prevent financial liquidation. l To protect the organisation from litigation.
Spencer told attendees: “Every time someone handles an endoscope that comes out of a washer disinfector there’s a presumption that you’re handling a safe device. “Every one presumes that it is safe to handle and you take no further protection to protect yourself from the dangers of that endoscope, which you would do if it was dirty. We make presumptions when we take scopes out of our machines.” Spencer pointed to an example in the south west of England
where a member of reprocessing staff and a member of clinical staff were both disciplined after making a presumption that decontamination was being done.
Reputation matters
Giving an example of an NHS organisation that suffered reputational damage, he highlighted the Stafford Hospital scandal – which concerned poor care and high mortality rates amongst patients at the Stafford Hospital, Stafford, England, in the late 2000s. “Mid Staffs as an NHS organisation
doesn’t exist anymore. The hospital – Stafford Hospital – doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “The building is there, but in name it has changed and it’s now known as County Hospital, which is part of University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust.
Wayne Spencer
“It just goes to show how high profile these things rapidly become. What happens when you get into a situation of reputational damage is that financial liquidation sometimes follows. It follows easier than you think. You have to remember that with the NHS now when you get into a circular reputation liquidation issue, all your payments follow the procedure that you do. If you don’t get patients choosing to come to your establishment anymore then you get less money through the door.
Dr Griffiths outlined the principles of decontamination during her presentation. 56 I
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“If you get less money through the door you can pay less. You’ll get staff saying ‘I don’t think I’ll apply for that job’ or ‘I don’t think I want to go and work there’. The level of care perhaps suffers some more. You get less patients and less money coming through the chain of finance. You get a whole circle that’s spiralling downwards. That’s what happened at Mid Staffs. What started off with a few incidents rapidly spiralled into a very bad situation.”
SEPTEMBER 2017
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