Health care facilities are prone to harmful bacteria, germs, pathogens that can spread and cause severe complications. From outpatient procedures to intensive surgeries, these processes depend on medical instruments to be successfully sterilized regularly to prevent the spread of harmful microorganisms. Read out how to Keep Medical Equipment Sterilized with NaDCC Disinfectant.
It is of utmost importance that a thorough sterilization protocol is established and implemented on all medical devices after and before every use. Cleaning the medical equipment and instruments using strong sterilizers, like NaDCC disinfectant, can protect the healthcare providers, patients, and the facility’s visitorsfrom infections and other health concerns.
Let’s have a look at sterilization, the importance of sterile medical instruments, and the process of sterling the instruments:
What is Sterilization?
Sterilization is the process of thorough cleaning that eliminates fungi, viruses, and bacteria. These microorganisms spread on the surfaces of reusable equipment and medical equipment that can be transferred to a patient during treatment if not sterilized.
These harmful microorganisms can enter the patients’ bodies through unsterilized instruments and result in the spread of infection. Even if the tools appear clean, they might contain microscopic biological debris, blood, and pieces of tissues invisible to the naked human eye.
Millions of cases of Health Associated Infections (HAIs) occur in U.S. hospitals every year, leading to complications and even fatalities. This number can be drastically reduced by taking measures to sterilize instruments. Sterilization helps eliminate these microorganisms from reusable medical instruments, including scalpels, endoscopes, surgical forceps, stethoscopes, and more.
Reasons to Sterilize Medical Equipment
Due to the invasive and intensive surgical processes, the contact between the medical device or surgical instrument and patients’ sterile tissue or mucous membrane is inevitable.There is a significant risk of these procedures presenting pathogenic microbes that can result in infections. When these medical instruments are not sterilized or disinfected, this risk drastically increases because of the breach of these host barriers.
The patients, hospital staff, and even visitors can get infected due to these unsterilized instruments. Therefore, it is integral that the bacteria are eliminated to prevent the spread of infections like HAIs. Improper staff hygiene, contaminated equipment, and surgical instruments can lead to HAIs. Here are some of the benefits of sterilizing surgical and medical instruments using NaDCC Disinfectant:
- It helps eliminate dirt, foreign particles, blood, and pus that get left behind during the procedures and can result in harmful complications for the next patient who gets operated on using the same unsterilized instruments.
- It also reduces the bioburden, which is the unsterilized bacteria that live on surfaces.
- It stops the corrosion of highly precise and expensive tools with delicate hinges and pivots.
- It eliminates the possibility of the surviving germs creating a breeding ground on the instruments.
- It provides a safe way for instruments and equipment to be stored, packed, and assembled for disinfection and sterilization.
When the process of disinfection and sterilization is properly done, it provides safe use of invasive and non-invasive medical equipment.
Steps to Sterilize Medical Equipment
Selecting the right way to is essential, especially when it comes to medical instruments. Insufficient or inappropriate sterilization methods can prevent your medical instruments from getting clearance from the FDA and other bodies. In a worst-case scenario, using unsterilized devices can transfer infections diseases to the patients, resulting in severe complications and even death.
To prevent this spread, healthcare facilities must have a proper sterilization and disinfection plan. This plan should consist of the following processes:
- Cleaning – Cleaning up the medical instruments to reuse is the initial step of thorough sterilization. It is essential to properly clean the devices before moving on to disinfection and sterilization.
- Disinfecting – The second step should involve using chemicals, like NaDCC disinfectant, to kill the bacteria. It is essential to disinfect the reusable objects before and after you use them on each patient.
- Sterilizing – Lastly, there are several sterilization methods that can eliminate transmissible agents and microorganisms, like spores and bacteria.
Using these steps in the same order for all reusable equipment each time they are used will reduce the risk of infection in patients, hospital staff, and visitors. Patients and their families already suffer enough during their hospital stay and treatment. It is the staff’s job to make sure any further complications or issues are prevented at all costs.
These steps of disinfection and sterilization can not only help in saving the lives of many but also decrease the liability cases for medical facilities and hospitals. Make sure to use the highest quality products from reliable suppliers for the disinfection and sterilization process.
The level of disinfection or sterilization depends on the usage of the instruments. Whether the medical devices require high-level or low-level disinfection is dependent on which of the following categories it falls under:
- Noncritical Instruments: these are instruments, like stethoscopes, that require low-level disinfection.
- Semi-Critical Instruments: these include instruments that come into contact with the mucous membrane, like endoscopes.
- Critical Instruments: these instruments are the ones that come in contact with sterile tissues.
It is essential to consider the disadvantages and benefits of specific techniques when you select the disinfection or sterilization process. Adhering to the recommendations can help you improve the disinfection and sterilization practices in healthcare facilities to reduce the risk of infections from contaminated objects.
Sterilizing medical instruments using chemicals like NaDCC disinfectant is the key to modern and safe healthcare to ensure all patients coming in for surgery, and other treatments leave healthy and happy.
It is essential for the medical safety of the staff, patients, and the hospital’s environment to use sterilized medical instruments safely. Effective and thorough sterilization of these instruments is crucial for the prevention of a disease or infection spread.
Following these steps to disinfect medical instruments can decrease the cross-contamination of the objects between uses. Plus, the sterile instruments will enhance patient care.
