Sterile Processing

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has donated the published proceedings from conferences on sterilization of medical products to the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), which will make the material available online as a complimentary service to the sterilization community.

Following yet another highly publicized patient exposure to dangerous pathogens via contaminated endoscopes, the healthcare and sterile processing communities are examining their processes, re-evaluating their priorities, and digesting new guidelines issued by several federal agencies.

Contamination. Outbreak. Infection. These are words no healthcare facility wants to hear - especially when they are linked with events that have occurred within their own institutions.

Central Service (CS) professionals who continue to hold out on becoming certified until their state legislators or hospital executives require it are not doing themselves, their healthcare customers and, especially, their patients any favors. Also, as more states board the certification bandwagon and new technicians are required to become certified in order to hold a position in the CS department, more tenured, non-certified professionals – even those who were “grandfathered” in under state law* (meaning that the bill exempts them from having to become certified) – will likely feel the pressure and may lose out to their certified counterparts.

The field of sterile processing is awash with new technologies, ever-tightening accreditation requirements, and an overwhelming flood of cutting-edge surgical instrumentation. But are departmental certification standards and training programs keeping up with these growing trends?