Photo By Jennifer Scales | Colonoscopy equipment gets ready to be prepared in the SPS department at the Wm....... read more read more
Jennifer Scales
Dorn VA Medical Center Public Affairs
Shhhhh…..there is an unseen force that exists on every shift, for the protection of many at the William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA Medical Center in Columbia, S.C.
Members of this force, like many heroes we envision, wear protective clothing from the top of their hair to the soles of their feet, covering as much of their body with deliberate and true dedication in providing defense from even the smallest microbe of an enemy that would dare think about invading and obstructing the health care of patients.
The Sterile Process Service, led by Thaddeus Jennings, chief of the service, and Jwan Jackson, reusable medical equipment coordinator, both give credit to each other and a team of employees who remain steadfast in their commitment to ensuring that all critical and non-critical equipment meets the Veteran Affairs, the manufacturers, and the national needs for sterilization. SPS is the only area that processes sterilization for the whole facility.
Jackson goes into explaining some of the items that are involved in sterilization. “Most people are familiar with the gastro-intestinal aspect of a medical procedure, which would may consist of an endoscopy or a colonoscopy.”
With an endoscopy procedure, a doctor puts a tube-like instrument into the body to examine a person’s digestive tract; the colonoscopy allows a doctor to look at the inner lining of large intestine or colon, using a thin, flexible tube.
“Both procedures require equipment to be sterilized after each use. We also have sets, like the total knee set used to replace a knee; hip sets which are used for hip replacements; cataract sets which are used to remove cataracts and replace with lenses; hemostats which are clamps used in surgery to stop bleeding, so many other medical equipment items,” Jackson said.
Jennings, who manages the whole department, assures that every product provided is sterile. “We monitor biological requirements by ensuring that one is run with every load that needs to be sterilized, compared to other medical facilities that may run them less often,” Jennings said.
Patient safety and infection controls are at the top of the list for SPS and all the section does for the entire medical center. Their standards comply with not only the local Dorn VA Medical Center standards, but also those of the Veteran Affairs agency, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, and the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instruments, to name a few.
The Greenville Community-Based Outpatient Clinic is the only other facility which falls under Dorn that uses critical and semi-critical equipment for sterilization.
Non-critical sterilization items which use other methods for cleaning include wheelchairs, blood pressure cuffs, and scales.
Then there are those which fall in the disposable category such as different types of forceps, scissors, nail clippers, to name a few.
The SPS staff of 30-plus, which includes lead technicians for quality assurance and medical supply technicians, is always on the cusp of learning new methodologies of sterilization because with every instrument comes an instruction for use (IFU) from the manufacturer.
“We may have between 500-600 IFU’s on hand in our section,” Jennings said. “Even with new medical instruments we receive, we hold it for 72 hour before it is used for the first time. The staff is educated on its sterilization procedures, and of course make sure it is safe for patient use.”
Jennings credits Jackson with spearheading the collaboration with other service lines in the medical facility who are in direct support with SPS. “We have relationships with Dental, Operation Room, Ear/Nose/Throat, Podiatry, Urology, and Dermatology,” Jackson said. “There are champions and stakeholders in those departments which are instrumental in our policies and procedures.”
SPS is a field where a person is behind the scenes, but you make a huge impact, according to Jennings.
Having been an operating room nurse for her entire career, Jackson sees and still takes pride in what she does now. “We are able to speak confidently to the Veteran because we go beyond the standards. We also visit other for inspections and even share our best practices with them,” Jackson said.
“We are the frontline to defending and protecting our Veterans, from behind the scenes,” Jennings said. “We believe in best practices and we bring them to our customers.”
| Date Taken: | 07.19.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 07.19.2017 10:04 |
| Story ID: | 241701 |
| Location: | COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 140 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Employee force at Dorn IS the first line of microbe defense for Veterans, by Jennifer Scales, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
