Ms Holly dodd1
1Launceston General Hospital, Launceston, Australia
Biography:
Holly has experience working as an Infection and Control Clinical Nurse Consultant across private metropolitan hospitals on the Australian mainland. Holly draws on her previous nursing experience from working in the fields of Cardio-thoracic, ICU and CCU.
Holly currently works as Infection Prevention and Control Clinical Nurse Educator
Abstract:
Single Use Metal Instruments (SUMIs) are found throughout the hospital and used in many minor procedures. The steel is poor quality and rusts easily when reprocessed, so must be used once and then disposed of.
Aim was to implement a recycling process for our SUMIs. We developed a Safe Operating Process (SOP) which involved all SUMIs being decontaminated in our dishwasher then disposed of in a designated area. The process worked well, in Theatre and successfully extended to Radiation Oncology (consider controlled environments).
Now the remainder of Launceston General Hospital (LGH); we needed a robust process. The SUMIs needed to be stored on the ward in a rigid container in a lockable area. We also had to identify a lockable area where the SUMIs could be stored in our non-restricted waste area. A method was developed, all SUMIs would be brought to House Services, the contents of the buckets were viewed then taken to a bin in a locked cage.
We wanted to roll this out to our rural sites. There were a few challenges; industry could only supply 240lt bins which would take years to fill up, not all rural sites had access to dishwashers, and then how were we going to get the SUMIs back to LGH? So, the SOP was adapted so all visually clean SUMIs could be recycled and a strategy developed and implemented to support the SUMIs being transported back to LGH.
SUCCESS, in 8 months we have recycled 160kg.