Inventory of the Sterilization Units at a Tertiary-Level South Tunisian University Hospital

Abstract

Sterilization of reusable medical devices (RMD) is considered as one of the major components of healthcare associated infection (HAI) prevention that should be strictly maintained. Microorganisms responsible for HAI can be transmitted from a common inanimate vehicle such as medical RMD to patients. Sterilization is a complete process with a set of successive steps to finally achieve a sterile RMD. In addition to these steps, which must be carefully controlled, the whole environment of this process should also conform to quality and security standards and criteria in order to ensure a robust sterilization process and a secure RMD. Therefore, a complete and exhaustive evaluation of this process is highly recommended. This evaluation aimed firstly to examine the inventory of sterilization process, architecture, and environment as well as to present recommendations to be adopted to adjust the practices and failures recorded accordingly.