Every day, primary care providers (PCPs), surgical teams, and other hospital and community-based healthcare providers, use reusable medical devices to deliver care.
All healthcare settings reusing these items must follow national reprocessing standards to prevent infections and support quality, safe care. These standards define how items must be prepped for reprocessing, reprocessed, packaged, transported and stored.
To support compliance and reliable access to high quality Medical Device Reprocessing (MDR) services, Nova Scotia Health is leading efforts to develop and implement a Provincial Medical Device Reprocessing (MDR) Quality and Sustainability Plan.
A focus on quality and sustainability:
Developed with the CSA, Accreditation Canada Medical Device Reprocessing Standards require Nova Scotia to have a provincial leader accountable for MDR quality oversight and the coordination of reprocessing services. To comply with this standard, Nova Scotia Health created the provincial role of director, medical device reprocessing, quality and sustainability within the Perioperative Services Network.
In this role, Sarah Miles, a former operating room nurse and Perioperative Services manager, now leads a team that is working with medical device reprocessing leaders, teams and healthcare providers -- including our IWK health colleagues -- to support quality services and to develop and implement a quality and sustainability plan.
About this plan
The provincial plan will help Nova Scotia Health:
- Monitor and support standards compliance -- effective quality control such as audits, etc.
- Identify and address risks -- storage issues, etc.
- Support training and continuing education - clear and accessible toolkits, training materials, etc.
- Support effective and proactive:
- workforce planning -- retirement planning, projection of workforce needs, etc.
- equipment planning -- plan for maintenance, replacement and addition of sterilization equipment, etc.
- infrastructure planning -- plan for maintenance, replacement and addition of spaces needed to deliver these services, etc.
- Ensure MDR needs are identified in health services planning -- facility replacement/redevelopment planning, the launch of new clinics or services, etc.
Progress to date
- The provincial team has worked with the zone Medical Device Reprocessing leadership teams to review the current state of their MDR areas, including equipment, infrastructure and staffing. This is helping identify priority areas of focus including equipment and infrastructure needs.
- Work has begun with Infection Prevention and Control, to develop resources to help educate teams and sites on infection prevention guidelines, including reprocessing requirements/standards.
- Work underway with Diagnostic Imaging Operations Council (DI directors and others) to share information on planning and collect information on their current use of MDR services, etc.
- Liaising with People Services, Workforce Planning leads to support planning for MDR technician workforce. This has including supporting efforts to increase awareness of this career path -- More than Medicine Career Paths - Medical Device Reprocessing Technicians
Next steps
- Work with Primary Care leaders to introduce planning and seek their input and support to understand:
- Current state
- What are the current reprocessing needs of primary care clinics (i.e., turn-key clinics, urgent care centres, mobile clinics, others) and how are these needs being met (i.e., volume of devices being sent to NSH MDR areas for reprocessing, volume of reprocessing occurring on site and how, level of awareness of standards, etc.).
- Future state needs
- What new services and clinics are being planned/launched?
- Will they be using reusable or disposable items?
- If they have reprocessing needs, is there a plan in place to address those needs?
- What supports are needed to ensure these sites/teams are aware of and complying with standards?
- Current state
Our team
The Provincial Medical Device Reprocessing team includes these members of the Perioperative Services Network:
- Sarah Miles, director, medical device reprocessing, quality and sustainability
- Stephanie Mailman-Crouse, quality leader
- Jodi Naugler, project manager
- Cara Simms, clinical project consultant
- Allysha Whooten, administrative assistant
