Decontamination
procedures, and is onsite or offsite capacity the best option? Ageing infrastructure also has implications on capacity decisions. Water quality requirements, steam supplies, heating ventilation and air conditioning requirements all play into financial investment decisions. While physical capacity is critical to
reprocessing success, the second enabler of People has proven to be just as important.
People Even with advances in technology, reprocessing is very dependent on people. The ‘People Enabler’ focuses on key success factors for creating and managing a reprocessing workforce. First is ensuring the department has an optimal workforce model. How a department is structured has a direct impact on its ability and capacity to manage and perform to expectations. Leadership and support positions are just as important as technicians. Every production environment, including instrument processing, requires dedicated time for leadership, administrative, and support functions. Creating the optimal organisational structure ensures time can be dedicated to these functions. With dedicated time, organisational value
is created through continuous improvement activities, leveraging resources and technology to improve production quality and throughput, and ensuring production staff are engaged, productive, and happy with their work environment. Without the correct workforce model, staff and leadership may feel overwhelmed, under supported, and look for work elsewhere. Equally important to the overall organisational
structure is the second key success factor of technician staffing. It’s surprising how many reprocessing teams do not have a data-based method to justify technician staffing levels. Similar to the Capacity Enabler, technician
Organisations that effectively leverage data automation may gain significant advantages in operational performance, decision making, and resource optimisation.
staffing levels require alignment of performance standards and expectations. Alignment on what activities are to be performed and how those activities are to be performed is critical to calculating staffing requirements. How much manual cleaning is expected in decontamination, what inspecting and testing activities will be performed in the clean room, and what productivity levels are expected are some examples. Leadership cannot ignore these critical expectations. If they do, staff will decide how to do the work themselves. The third ‘People Enabler’ success factor is education and training. Traditional education and training may involve a preceptor or experienced technician showing a new hire how to perform a task. This mentor-mentee relationship can be successful if placed within a structured framework to remove personal preferences. The enabler focuses on defining best practices in education and training including leveraging technology solutions. Leveraging online and mobile applications to reduce or eliminate paperwork increases the amount of time educators or mentors spend teaching. Building guided workflows into track and trace
software help ensure compliance with internal processes and also act as a live teaching and education tool for new hires and experienced technicians. Digitising education and training, including competencies, provides labour efficiencies and opens the door for technology to manage when staff are allowed to perform tasks independently or require review before completing. The fourth ‘People Enabler’ success factor is
leadership development. It’s quite common to find a reprocessing leader who was promoted without receiving training or guidance on how to be a leader. Additionally, many reprocessing departments may not have a structured documented leadership process that new leaders can assimilate into. Instead, they are asked to figure out how to manage operations on their own. A more structured approach to leadership
development is required. There are best practices, industry standards, and regulatory requirements that can provide structured leadership routines. It shouldn’t matter who the manager is; it should be the system that drives operational success. Quality Management Systems, such as those outlined in ISO 13485, will provide some of the context and structure for leaders but fall short of a full department Playbook. Documenting what and how things should be completed is critical not only for technicians but also for leaders. The last ‘People Enabler’ success factor is
culture. While culture is a cumulation of many other attributes, it’s so important that without a positive supporting culture, all other efforts may be in vain. Culture can drive success or drain the energy from the department. High employee turnover, low engagement, poor satisfaction survey scores, low productivity, quality issues, and excessive sick days are all indicative of poor culture. Culture happens whether you like it or
not. Ignore culture and you’ll probably end up with a poor one. Poor culture happens when left unattended. Good culture is rarely a coincidence. Good culture is something you intentionally work on, focus on, and invest in. It takes effort. The ‘People Enabler’ creates an optimal
workforce model, sufficient technician staff, effective education and training programmes, structured leadership development, and a supportive culture. It also sets you up for operational performance success that starts with the next Enabler.
Process Operational success starts with the ‘Enabler of Process’. Reprocessing is all about process. This enabler has two focus areas: reprocessing operations and operations management. Reprocessing operations start by
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www.clinicalservicesjournal.com I October 2026
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