Implementing best practice standards and procedures ensures patient and staff safety.
Automated High Level Disinfection (HLD)
Automation mitigates human error risk and provides both staff and facilities confidence that they are providing the highest standard of care for patients.
Compliance With Guidelines
Guidelines are essential and designed to help healthcare workers apply best practices to ensure their patients are safe from infection. Manual reprocessing methods often have many steps and rely on the operator to ensure compliance. Automation of some or all of these steps helps minimise human error and decision making for staff and streamlines workflows, improving compliance with guidelines.
A study on human factors impacting endoscope reprocessing found only 1.4% compliance with guidelines when manual cleaning methods were used. Compliance increased to 75.4% among employees using a semi-automated reprocessor.1
Automation makes compliance easier to help you meet best practices.
Validation
Automated devices provide assurance that the critical parameters (e.g. contact time, temperature, dosage) are controlled and all surfaces of the probe head and handle are disinfected.
Manual disinfection does not give you the same quality assurance. Bactericidal efficacy is minimally expected from manual low level disinfection (LLD), however studies continue to show that LLD fails to eliminate bacteria from probes.2-4
Automated HLD with the trophon® device has been shown to systematically eliminate bacteria every time from probe heads and handles, outperforming manual methods.2,4
Automated methods also incorporate traceability, which is documented evidence the ultrasound probe was properly disinfected before use.
Traceability
Traceability is the documentation collected to link medical devices and their reprocessing records with patient use.5-7
This process is essential for investigations in the event of reprocessing failures, outbreaks or recalls, and can help facilities manage risk. Traceability is required for semi-critical and critical medical devices that undergo HLD or sterilisation.
Accrediting agencies look for traceability processes that are compliant with the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards. The following data needs to be captured and linked.5-7
- Patient ID
- Procedure
- Reprocessing date
- Equipment IDs
- Type of transducer
- Unique transducer ID
- Staff performing reprocessing
- MRC test result
- Rinsing
- Cycle process record/print-out
- HLD batch number
- HLD expiry date
- HLD test strip result
- HLD contact time
- HLD temperature
- HLD cycle number
Digitised collection of some or all of the above data will help streamline workflow, ensure data security and integrity, and minimise risk of human error in record keeping.
Mitigation of Chemical Exposure
In any healthcare setting, it is important that staff and patients are protected from chemical exposure risks. An automated closed system reduces exposure to chemicals and enhances employee health and safety.1
Learn more about the mitigation of chemical exposure risks with the trophon®2 device
The trophon family of devices includes trophon® EPR and trophon2 which share the same core technology of sonicated hydrogen peroxide.
References:
- Ofstead CL, et al. Gastroenterol Nurs. 2010; 33(4):304-11.
- Buescher DL, et al. Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol 2016;47(5): 646-651.
- Leroy S, et al. J Hosp Infect 2013;83(2): 99-106.
- Ngu, A., et al. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 36(5): 1-4.
- AS 5369:2023 Reprocessing of reusable medical devices and other devices in health and non-health related facilities
- ACIPC/ASUM 2017. Guidelines for Reprocessing Ultrasound Transducers. Australasian Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine. 2017;20(1):30-40.
- Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, second edition. November 2017 Action 3.17
