TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT Decontamination TP
DTP ACTIVITY REPORT
Dr Brian Kirk IHEEM DTP Chair
T
he Decontamination Technical Platform (DTP), consisting of all
IHEEM registered Authorising Engineers (Decontamination), has had a busy year, with several projects being undertaken and ongoing, with members of the DTP acting as project leaders. The DTP has also welcomed newly registered AE(D)s to the group. The group has had successful virtual and face-to- face meetings, the latest held at the Eastwood Park Training centre. Members were also invited to, and several
attended, a training seminar at a commercial facility near Derby, where a varied programme was organised covering various topics – including new steam battery technology offered by a commercial organisation specialising in steam, and some insights into testing water supplies by an expert microbiologist from a commercial laboratory offering testing services to the NHS. Jim Tinsdeall identified a problem with
the sterilisation of Phaco handpieces, used during ophthalmic surgery; these complex medical devices contain fine tubes surrounded by polymeric materials of low thermal conductivity. During his experimental studies he not only identified significant thermal lag into the fine tubes, but was also able to recover viable microorganisms, clearly indicating inadequate processing. As a result, he developed a guidance sheet for those who need to sterilise such items, which was further developed by DTP members, leading to an IHEEM ‘branded’ document being made available to members on the Institute’s website.
14 Health Estate Journal January 2024 John Prendergast has led a small team to
identify shortcomings in the assessment of the competency of AP(D)s and CP(D)s.
As a result the team has developed a guidance document to help AE(D)s assessing estates staff for competency to be appointed as AP(D)s in their Trusts, and hopefully the wider community. An initial AP(D) assessment ‘app’ has been developed to further enhance and harmonise the acceptance process. This is of great importance since – as outlined by a speech at the IHEEM conference – moves are afoot by government to begin to develop a competency assessment process for AP(D)s, and ultimately CP(D)s, with the possibility of creating a professional register in the future. A project has started to extend the training framework to cover
pharmaceutical production. While the majority of AE(D)s are active in the healthcare sector, there are some practising in the pharma industry, and they are identifying issues with training of those who are testing contained fluids sterilisers in that sector. With this in mind a small sub- group has been formed to assess the AE(D) training framework to see if any additional content is needed to cover knowledge required to operate in a pharmaceutical setting, where contained fluids in various container types and volumes are sterilised by often complex moist heat sterilisation processes.
The IHEEM Decontamination Technical Platform and Board presented at last October’s Healthcare Estates 2023 conference.
GUIDANCE DOCUMENT
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