According to water purification equipment suppliers, estates and facilities teams are now increasingly involved in specifying, purchasing, configuring, and maintaining the sophisticated equipment required to clean and disinfect endoscopes, and, more especially, the water purification equipment needed to ensure an effective “clean”.
However, changing guidelines on the levels of water purity required for thorough “reprocessing”, varying standards of incoming mains water, and differing opinions on which sanitisation methods best combat bacteria, make it vital that they fully understand the issues before specifying potentially costly purification equipment which may otherwise not perform quite as expected.
Constant pressure to minimise hospital-acquired infection rates, coupled with the wider drive for higher cleanliness and sterilisation standards, is, it seems, impacting considerably on the way both central sterilisation departments and endoscope reprocessing units in UK hospitals are run. One burgeoning trend, where space allows, is for hospitals to bring together, in new, centralised facilities, endoscope reprocessing machines previously located in different departments, the thinking being that this not only allows greater control, but also improves standards and enhances efficiency and throughput at a time when demand for endoscopic procedures has never been greater. According to David Hayes, sales manager at Somerset-based water purification equipment specialist Environmental Water Systems (UK) Ltd (EWS), estates and facilities managers are now increasingly being consulted by decontamination and infection control teams seeking reassurance that the purity of the water supplied for endoscope reprocessing is as high as humanly possible, and indeed with estates engineers generally well versed in large water distribution systems’ intricacies, EFM personnel will often be the ones responsible for actually purchasing, or upgrading, water purification systems. David Hayes cautions, however, that making a considered choice that, for instance, takes full account of the quality of a hospital’s incoming mains water supply, is vital if potentially expensive mistakes are to be avoided. He says: “I have also seen hospitals install quite expensive purification equipment with, say, the infection control, endoscope reprocessing, or CSSD teams involved unfortunately treating the choice of system almost as an afterthought. Too often the importance of the water purification equipment in enabling endoscope reprocessing teams to achieve the standards required under Department of Health and other key guidance is hugely underestimated.”
Widening instrument range
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