STERILE SERVICES
TemporarySSDunit achievesthe‘impossible’
RoyalUnitedHospitals BathNHS Foundation Trust has been able to undertake a full sterile services refurbishment project without disrupting services.
In its six months of operation, a temporary sterile services facility supplied by SSD, to Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust has enabled the busy department to continue working, processing an increased workload while achieving a KPI on breakdown callouts of just six hours and three minutes. Like many other hospitals the refurbishment of sterile services at Bath had been postponed on a number of occasions while patient-facing schemes were given priority. This led to an increasing number of issues and cancellations as the equipment reached the end of its working life. Soby Joseph, the Trust’s sterile services and decontamination manager, explained: “The ongoing SSD centralisation project, which is now nearing completion, sees both endoscopy and instrument reprocessing located in one facility.” Locating a temporary facility to reprocess the hospital’s flexible endoscopes was relatively straightforward. However, solving the instrument reprocessing conundrum proved to be a completely different matter. “We considered several options; going elsewhere for reprocessing, phasing the refurbishment work, or locating a temporary facility,” said Soby.
Going offsite and using other hospitals’ facilities posed many issues: such as the logistics of time, the number of instruments being offsite, and the role of the
Soby Joseph, left, sterile services and decontamination manager; David Lockyer, deputy decontamination manager; Lee Williams, technical project manager; Beverley Parmenter, quality manager - decontamination; Garth Rowbottom, junior service engineer SSD
decontamination staff during that period. The option of phasing what would be a major project while the department continued partial operation was something which the decontamination and capital project teams felt was too high a risk. The decision was therefore made to source a temporary facility. After asking other hospitals, The Institute of Decontamination Sciences (IDSc) and equipment manufacturers, the only temporary solution which appeared to be available at the time was from a supplier in Belgium. However, at every stage of the negotiations there appeared to be issues with availability and what needed to be done.
Two portakabin buildings which the temporary facility comprises were built to SSD’s specification, ready for the installation of the equipment once the two units were positioned onsite.
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WWW.CLINICALSERVICESJOURNAL.COM A“lucky break”
“We struck lucky in a phone call to Olympus, who suggested we speak to Garth Rowbottom,” said Lee Williams, the Trust’s technical projects manager. Garth, of SSD, has many years of experience in decontamination and had already drawn up plans for a temporary SSD facility. “We were right up against it,” explained
Lee. “The clock was ticking. We had a programme of what was happening for sterile services. Garth came up with an idea of how we could do it. We worked with him through a number of phases to make the unit work. We always knew where it would be located - close to sterile services. The site presented its own issues: a pathway, bridge, fire regulations, a wall - all impinged on the size of the unit.” Taking up the story, David Lockyer, deputy decontamination manager, said: “The Trust supplied a specification to Garth, not for the equipment, just the throughput and facilities required. At the time we had four washer-
SEPTEMBER 2019
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