Cleaning surgical instruments, syringes, and bandages is an important part of modern medical care, since patients use them all the time. To keep your patients, other doctors, and the environment safe, you need to use medical equipment in a safe way. This means keeping al instruments clean and sterilize. To prevent diseases such as HIV from spreading from one patient to another, these important pieces of equipment must be cleaned well and thoroughly.
Here, we talk about how to sterilise medical equipment, including the reasons why it’s important to do so and the tools and methods used to do it.
Why Is It Important For An Instument To Be Clean?
Sterilizing medical equipment is important so that hospitals and other health care facilities can care for their patients safely. Every day, hospital staff use tools on many different patients in different parts of the building. So, bacteria and other harmful things come into contact with medical instruments. To get rid of these contaminants, you need to do more than just clean. One study reveals that sterilisation and disinfection are so important for killing microbes on the surface of an object. This means that a clean object may not have any visible dirt on it.
Sterilization is important because it is the best way to make sure that doctors and nurses don’t give their patients an infection or disease while they are treating them. If you feel any symptoms related to infectious disease such as HIV, make sure to have an anti HIV test. It will help you to find out germ in your body that can cause HIV. By considering all these elements, doctors should get a training on how to clean instruments such as.
Table of Contents
How To Clean Instruments ?
All hospitals must have a plan of action to stop the spread of HAIs. The hospital’s plan for fighting germs is made up of a few steps that are done in this exact order:
Cleaning
Cleaning should always come before sterilising or disinfecting at a high level.
Disinfection
The second step is to disinfect. To kill bacteria that doesn’t make spores and liquid chemicals can be used to disinfect surgical instruments.
Sterilizing
There are different sterilizing ways to kill disease-causing microorganisms and get rid of things that can spread, like bacteria and spores.
How much you sterilise or clean something depends on how you’re going to use it. Here are five significant methods for cleaning surgical instruments that you should follow such as
5 Simple Gudlienes For Cleaning Surgical Instrument
When it comes to medical equipment, picking the best way to clean it is very important. Using a method of sterilisation that isn’t right or isn’t good enough can, at best, cause infectious diseases to spread, which can make a patient sick or kill them. One study reveals that precautions against HIV’s transmission can be controlled through common sterilisation methods that used to clean up instruments that have been contaminated with blood. These methods are
Sterilization By Steam
Autoclaves are steam sterilisers that are used in most sterile processing departments. This is because steam is usually the safest and cheapest way to clean most medical equipment. Some technicians will only use a different method if the medical device can’t be sterilised with steam or is made of a material that can’t handle heat. All microorganisms on an object are killed by the autoclave’s high pressure and heat.
With steam sterilisation, the outside of the medical equipment is cleaned with the right decontaminant. Before the process starts, you can protect the instruments by wrapping them in paper or cotton. For the best results, you must let the steam touch all parts of the equipment. When you put equipment inside a steam steriliser, make sure there is enough space between each piece so that it can move freely. Before you use the steam steriliser, you should look at the instructions from the manufacturer.
Killing Germs With Dry Heat
When steam can’t get into an instrument or will destroy it, dry heat is the next best thing. Dry heat is a powerful but slow method that needs time and high temperatures to work. Because of this, it’s not good for many materials, but it’s often still more reliable than other options. In dry heat sterilisation, air around 340 degrees Fahrenheit is used to kill microorganisms.
Cleaning With Chemicals
In this process, chemical solutions that have been made are used. Some chemicals that are often used to clean:
- Ethylene oxide and ozone
- Hydrogen peroxide Bleach
These chemicals can kill a wide range of pathogens, but they also have properties that could be bad for people. You completely submerge the equipment in the chemical for a set amount of time, or until the pathogens die. Once the equipment is clean, rinse it off and let it dry. Biological materials, fibre optics, and other things that are very sensitive to heat can’t be sterilised with chemicals.
Plasma Gas Sterilizers
This type of sterilisation uses low-temperature hydrogen peroxide-based gas plasma inside a chamber to kill any spores, bacteria, fungi, or viruses on dental and medical equipment. When vaporised hydrogen peroxide is added to the chamber, it cleans the equipment inside. Once the vapour is taken out of the chamber, a lower-temperature plasma is made. This makes sure that all the equipment is completely sterilised.
The last parts of this process are oxygen and water, which make these sterilisers safe for the environment and for medical staff. Even though this method is more expensive, it works very well and is a great choice for tools and medical equipment that are sensitive to moisture.
Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide (VHP) Sterilizers
With VHP sterilisers, you use hydrogen peroxide vapour just like you do with plasma sterilisation, but you don’t use plasma gas. VHP sterilisation gets rid of the humidity inside an enclosure, and a generator quickly injects VHP into the enclosure to reach the right concentration for sterilising equipment.
Microorganisms that might be there are killed by the vapours, making the enclosure clean. The generator then turns the process around and breaks the vapour into parts that are good for the environment. VHP sterilisation has a short cycle time, which means that it can be used to sterilise a lot of equipment at once.
Things You Should Consider
Early in 2020, doctors and nurses all over the world found out how hard it was to get the other medical supplies they needed during a pandemic. This shows how important it is to have the right training, tools, and procedures for cleaning and disinfecting medical equipment and devices that can be used more than once.
Every health care worker should try to reduce the risk of cross-contamination as much as possible, whether it’s from HAI, Coronavirus, or any other infectious disease. By following strict rules for cleaning and disinfecting medical devices, it is possible to keep a life from being put in danger or even lost. After all, a health care worker’s main job is to help their patients and save their lives. In case if you start feeling symptom of HIV’s please do not hesitate to contact your doctor. He will help you to fight with this infectious disease.
