What kind of challenges do medical devices with nonroutine processing methods present for CS departments?
CS/SPD departments are seeing more instrument sets and reusable medical devices requiring extended sterilization cycles. If reusable medical devices or instruments require a sterilization cycle other than a routine, four-minute cycle, biomed or the individuals who service your sterilizers will most likely become involved. … Modern sterilizers have cycle options that can be preset to specified sterilization parameters to include extended exposure times and drying cycles. Once your CS/SPD department has established a variety of cycles that are preset on your sterilizers for these various exposure times (they can range from eight minutes up to 40 minutes), the next step is to devise a way for your staff to recognize each device and each set of instruments that require these extended sterilization cycles. If your facility has a computer system for instrumentation, this data can be keyed in so that staff is always alerted to the correct sterilizer and the correct cycle to use to terminall
