NHS trust to invest in surgical instruments

NHS trust to invest in surgical instruments

Surgical instruments are crucial tools for many healthcare providers. Whether they are single use surgical instruments or longer lasting ones, they always need to be clean. If this is not the case, they may put the health and indeed lives of patients at risk.

With this in mind, NHS Dumfries and Galloway is to invest a considerable amount of money on new equipment to ensure the surgical instruments it uses are of the necessary standard in terms of hygiene.

The organisation, which provides services to a population of around 148,500 over an area of 2,400 square miles, will spend in excess of 400,000 replacing its decontamination equipment, the Dumfries and Galloway Standard reports.

Over the last few years, the trust may have been wishing it relied more on single use surgical instruments, as its cleaning devices became increasingly unreliable and suffered frequent failures.

Commenting on the issue, chief operating officer Jeff Ace said: "Over the last few years the machines have become increasingly unreliable with frequent breakdowns, impacting on service delivery."

The pieces of equipment have now been found unfit for purpose. During a recent meeting, board members agreed to fund two separate decontamination units within theatre and day surgery departments.

In addition, they agreed to replace the current system in Galloway Community Hospital after an inspection conducted in the summer of last year found that the endoscope washer disinfectors were not in good working order.

On this particular issue, Mr Ace noted: "The risks to patients include injury from contact with equipment which is contaminated with residual chemical disinfectants and infections, including blood borne virus, from contact with endoscopes which have not been effectively decontaminated."

Like many other public sector organisations, the NHS is likely to have to rein in spending over coming months and years as the government's attempts to cut the fiscal deficit take effect.

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