MDRD Series — Episode 1 of 4: The Journey Begins — Point of Use to Decontamination

You know, a surgeon asks for a particular instrument in the OR.

The sterile pack machine is open.

The instrument is provided to the surgeon.

You know, we tend to focus on just that moment.

But, you know, that instrument has gone through quite a process before it's actually opened up in the OR.

So, you know, it's reprocessed.

It's gone through a sterilization process.

you know, it would have been at some point used on another patient, but it's been sterilized, everything that's been done, and it can be reused.

But once it's been used, it kind of goes through the process.

You know, it's going to be contaminated, obviously, with blood, tissue, and microorganisms.

So, you know, it's got to be cleaned properly.

or safely transported, and the process of it being cleaned, inspected, packaged, sterilized, stored, eventually returned to the clinical environment with an OR.

So it goes through all these little processes before it ends up back in the OR.

So we're going to go through that first episode, that first process, and we're going to do that in the four episodes.

Episode one, we're going to start at the very beginning.

What happens when an instrument is actually a reusable medical device finishes being used in an OR or procedure room until it's completed the cleaning and decondamination stage.

So...

That'll be episode one.

Episode two, we'll focus in on...

We'll cross over to the clean side and talk about the inspection, assembly, and packaging.

And then episode three, you'll pick up again on the clean side.

We'll get into the sterilization process and kind of explain how it works, how it's monitored, how importantly, how we know the process actually worked.

So...

And then finally, we'll wrap up episode four.

We'll go beyond the sterilization and look into storage, transportation, traceability, quality assurance, and what happens when something goes wrong.