Digital Transparency
Staff turnover rates and surgical cases are rapidly increasing, with a lack of standardization and faulty equipment creating alarming levels of surgical risk in healthcare facilities. In this ever-changing industry, adopting digital tools is vital to stay ahead of challenges and refine strategies to advance healthcare standards.
Without proper resources and support, how can we expect SPDs to swiftly tackle these issues? The first step to overcome any challenge is to identify it. With complex workflows in high-stress environments, leveraging technology provides effective, simplified solutions. Digital tracking provides visible measurability, with real-time, objective records of adverse events that increase transparency across the board. These implementations are essential to maintain the integrity and quality around sterilization practices, ensuring the highest level of patient safety.
Managing Workflows
Imagine you have a pile of dishes in your kitchen sink. How do you know which to clean, how to clean and how long it would take? After all, burnt pans need to soak in warm water much longer than a coffee cup. More importantly, if you don’t know these details, how can you ensure everything is spotless, whether you’re doing your daily chores or prepping instruments for the OR?
When you start digitally recording your sterilization process, you can find a pattern through measurability and target resources for potential obstacles before they become serious problems. For example, SPDs can identify which instruments are at higher risk of improper cleaning and determine the appropriate sterilization process tailored towards these needs. With real time tracking, departments gain transparency into hospital operations. By utilizing measurability, they can lower risk, prevent delays and simplify workflow to rectify and improve patient outcomes.
Commitment to Education
As we embrace digital transformation, we hold a commitment to ongoing education and innovation in sterile processing. In high stress environments with staffing shortages and limited training, technicians are constantly under pressure to memorize hundreds of surgical instruments. Having proper documentation and digitizing critical workflows provides a standardized process that is a strong, reliable backbone for frontline technicians.
Centralizing data onto one platform allows departments to create and customize their workflow in accordance to their hospital’s policies, setting the standards for quality and safety. Measurability and tracking gives proper tools for effective training for staff to decrease quality errors, identify the right process and customize workflow to take on a proactive approach every time.
Leveraging Technology
Best practices are constantly evolving, and new research provides insight into necessary changes in day to day practices. By leveraging technology to implement new habits of tracking, SPDs can reinforce the effective strategies to reach their potential.