GHP December 2015

ghp December 2015 | 17 Additionally, the site at Guy’s Hospital has now been designated a centre of excellence by one of Essentia’s partners, Johnson and Johnson. Anne-Marie explains the importance of this partnership and how it has impacted on the department. “As part of being a centre of excellence, Johnson and Johnson bring people from around the world to our site for training, because we are seen as the best in the industry. My team, alongside J&J, train these professionals and show them how to achieve our high standards within their own environment. “This partnership is a key example of just how much we have grown over the last few years, from one site servicing one trust to a twin site with the largest NHS run sterile services department in the Europe currently.” Additionally, the department is a testbed for manufac- tures of healthcare equipment, such as the da Vinci surgical robot, which is designed in America, and therefore not compliant with EU health regulations. Essentia’s sterile services department works with man- ufactures such as da Vinci and others, ensuring that their devices are compliant with cleaning and hygiene rules set out by the EU to enable them to market them to healthcare providers within Europe. The vital nature of the sterile service department’s work means that their work is highly governed, and it their rigorous processes which have garnered them international attention. The trust has been supportive of the growing depart. Echoing the decision to call the overall organisation Essentia, Anne-Marie outlines her department’s im- portance, stating that the trust’s support highlights the vital nature of the department’s work. “It is vital that our work is supported because without us there would be no operating theatres, and a ma- jority of the hospitals other services would not be able to run effectively. We clean every piece of medical equipment as well the bulkier items, so without us the trust would find it very difficult to operate. “Because of this huge weight of responsibility we have very high standards, which we endeavour to uphold at all times. We have incredibly good quality returns, with our current non-conformances at one in 3000 failures or operational faults, which none of our commercial competitors or NHS colleagues can compete with.” The foundation of these high standards, according to Anne-Marie, is the department’s strong focus on staff training, which, moving forward, will help the depart- ment retain its high standards despite the expansion plans they have for the sterile services division. “We rest our reputation on these high standards, and as such we dedicate a vast amount of resources to training our staff. It takes two and a half years to train a basic level technician on all of the 5000 different instruments they have to know and check throughout the process.” industry insight