DECONTAMINATION SERVICES
The site has also been built to ensure exceptional levels of resilience and reliability, from an engineering perspective – the facility is completely self-sufficient, with N+1 redundancy (a form of resilience that ensures system availability in the event of electrical component failure), its own backup power generation, and independent water supply.
“We have built contingency into the site,” David explained. “There is enough chemical in the pipework to last 17 hours, if the barrel ran out, and the water tank contains 33,000 litres of water, so if there was a burst water main, we can continue to operate.”
Challenges
Managing change, and integrating staff from the three different hospital sites into one large team at the new supercentre, also required careful consideration. “Change is never easy, but we are making exceptional efforts to retain staff and ensure they feel valued. We have had to integrate three sites and three different cultures, in just 12 weeks,” Mark commented. “We were worried that the different sites would take the view that ‘this is how we do it’, leading to potential conflict, but I’ve never seen them happier. At Barnet, the changing rooms were so small that male staff had to get changed in the shower, while at Chase Farm, staff had to sit in a freezing portable cabin during tea breaks. Now the staff have plenty of space and pleasant facilities for changing, as well as a modern, comfortable staff room. We have given them the very best that we can.” Theatres and endoscopy staff also needed to come on board with the move to an off-site decontamination service, however, and there was initially some trepidation.
“Chase Farm and Barnet already had ‘offsite’ services, so they were accustomed to the idea that instruments and scopes needed to be transported to another location and delivered. However, the move to the supercentre meant a change in working practice and culture for the Royal Free – the sterile services department was previously adjacent to the theatres; as the sets came out of the sterilisers, theatre staff would take them off the racks. We had to build confidence in the new system, so that the theatre staff learned to trust that their sets would be delivered on time, when required,” David commented.
Managing this transition was crucial to the success of the project. Staff were nervous about the service being off-site, leading to some challenging practices – including the stockpiling of sets. Porters were finding sets ‘hidden away’, but T-DOC was able to show that the reprocessed sets had been delivered back
58 Health Estate Journal May 2020
The Trust is benefiting from faster washer-disinfectors, faster autoclaves (shown), and faster drying cabinets.
to the theatres, the time, and the exact location, which proved useful when dealing with complaints over ‘missing sets’.
“We were able to demonstrate that the decontamination service was performing correctly, in these instances, and the reporting tool helped increase confidence in the system,” Mark explained. “I think one of the issues was the fact that some staff had previously had bad experiences when using other providers of offsite decontamination services – instruments were late or went astray. They expected this to be the case with us, but by investing time and effort in delivering efficient services, backed by a dedicated quality and production manager, staff now realise that this is the future, and they have confidence in the system.”
He added that a team is on hand to deal with any issues at the Royal Free –
comprising three porters, customer liaison, and quality personnel. This has helped ensure a smooth transition and has brought staff on board with the changes. “Now that the theatre staff have been here to see the facility, they can see for themselves the scale of the operation – everything is new and moving through the process faster. We have faster washer-disinfectors, faster autoclaves, and faster drying cabinets. In addition, there are more pick-ups and drop-offs than they have ever had. In the past there was a delivery every two hours. Now, there are deliveries every 90 minutes,” Mark continued.
Managed services
All of the maintenance, weekly testing, validation, cleaning, and security, is undertaken by CFES and Getinge, as part of a managed service approach. “The Trust’s staff can simply focus on
The modern, attractive, and comfortable staff room.
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