COVE R S TORY
Designing out error in endoscope connection
A focus on ‘human factors’ is helping to eliminate errors in endoscope reprocessing through the design of an innovative ‘One Connection System’. iM Med offers an insight into the patented breakthrough from Steelco.
iM Med and Steelco
Innovation and a passion for customer service excellence brought iM Med, the UK-based decontamination specialist, to a natural partnership with Steelco for the provision of cutting-edge decontamination solutions to the UK healthcare market. iM Med was founded by industry specialists, with decades of experience in decontamination and a driving passion for quality, innovation, and patient focused excellence, leading to their selection to supply the Steelco range on the NHS Supply Chain Decontamination Capital Equipment National Framework. Part of the German Miele Group, Steelco is a leading Italian manufacturer of decontamination equipment and solutions for the specialities of healthcare, pharmaceutical and life science. The Steelco ARES Endoscopy Decontamination range provides the complete workflow of endoscope reprocessing, including pre-cleaning devices, endoscopy washer disinfectors, drying cabinets, endoscope storage transport solutions and traceability software.
Steelco has utilised the opportunity for
Human Factor Ergonomic Engineering in the development of the patented One Connection System (OCS).
Human factors in healthcare ‘Human factors’ describes a multi- disciplinary science that sits at the intersection of psychology and engineering, focused on understanding the interaction
between humans and other elements of a system within a given environment. Human factors focused design accounts for psychological and physiological principles and theories to the design of products, processes, and systems, improving safety, efficiency, quality, reliability and when applied effectively, also reduces costs. The primary purpose of healthcare
services is to deliver high quality care to all that is safe, clinically effective and results in a positive experience. However, delivering healthcare can place individuals, teams and organisations under pressure, with staff having to make decisions in dynamic, often unpredictable circumstances. In such intense situations, decision making can be compromised, impacting on the quality of clinical processes and potentially causing harm.
‘Inattentional blindness’, described by Green (2004), refers to our ability to adapt to our workplace and workloads by focusing our attention on the things that matter according to priority, but allowing other elements of the environment to go unnoticed. “Experienced people develop expectations and mental models that permit pre-programming of behaviour and minimisation of thought for routine, frequently performed tasks. …One irony of medical error is that the most experienced and able people are likely to make the most egregious and unfathomable errors. They have the most experience, the greatest skill and the strongest expectations.” Green, M. (2004, p.2).
The Steelco One Connection System The Steelco One Connection System is a patented connection innovation to address the potential for human factor error in endoscope connection.
The One Connection System (OCS) which, as the name suggests, means the Operator need only connect the endoscope once at the start of the decontamination process, this connection remains in place for the manual
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flushing/rinsing of the endoscope at the manual clean stage, then one connection into the automated washer disinfector and then to the drying/storage stages.
This innovation reduces the time it requires to connect and disconnect multiple connection types, i.e. attaching and un- attaching flusher tubing, attaching and un- attaching washer tubing, which also often has multiple connection points into machine.
Reducing the risk with the Steelco OCS
The OCS reduces the risks faced through the decontamination process in a number of ways: l Reduced risk of error by only connecting the endoscope at the start of the process, the operator does not have to repeat this process which eliminates the risk of mistakes further down the process. Often the connection method for dryers is very different to how endoscopy washer disinfectors connect, resulting in excessive manual handling during the process to remove the channel separators and connectors and reconnect dryer tubing.
OCTOBER 2020
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