In today’s healthcare environment, every dollar matters—but so does every decision. The challenge many organizations face is how to reduce costs without compromising patient care, safety, or staff well-being.

Water quality is a hot topic within SPD and there is a new AAMI standard ST108 that users now need to comply with. ST108 includes recommendations for scheduled water testing and monitoring as well as risk assessments to determine the appropriate water quality for the intended use.

Years ago, when we developed the SteriTite sealed container system, the healthcare industry was standardizing on wrapped plastic sterilization trays. They were light weight and came in a variety of colors with depressions that encapsulated an instrument. They looked nice for display purposes in industries like cosmetics, foodservice, and kitchenware.

Flash sterilization in the 1990s and even early in this millennium was used to rapidly sterilize surgical instruments in emergency situations, when unexpected delays backed-up the OR, or if a critical instrument was dropped before surgery. It was a way to keep the OR on schedule without necessarily considering the options. At the time, gravity displacement steam was the method of choice used in the OR to sterilize instruments.

Every person has a right to their opinion, but no one has a right to be wrong in their facts. It’s difficult separating fact from fiction, especially when you hear about it on the news or find it on the internet. 

Hands-on learning means learning by doing. Experiential learning environments provide endless hands-on learning benefits for all people, including SPD professionals.

Have you ever been told that the car you are considering is the newest and best ever, but never put on the road? That the coffee pot you bought is state of the art, but ends up burning apart

Geoffrey Hinton, often called the "Godfather of AI," is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist known for his groundbreaking work on artificial neural networks. His research significantly advanced the field of deep learning and artificial intelligence.

The central role of the Sterile Processing Department (SPD) is to decontaminate surgical instruments for patient care procedures. By carefully following cleaning and sterilization protocols for used devices, the SPD plays a critical role in infection prevention. However, not all infectious agents are created equal.

In our blog post last week, we talked about how to take down a bully virus with best practices.  We touched on the relative resistance of different categories of microorganisms to disinfectants and sterilization, and the critical baseline set with the Standard Precautions, where cleaning and disinfection always go hand-in-hand...