Beyond Clean Podcast

In 2011, Christina Fast, an internationally certified Sterile Processing Educator, volunteered on the Africa Mercy—the world's largest floating hospital. While docked in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Christina visited the sterile processing department of a local healthcare facility where she witnessed health care workers responsible for reprocessing surgical instruments who had never received training....

If you've ever been a new hire in the sterile processing department, this Season 7 Rewind of Beyond Clean may bring back some...interesting...memories. We're talking about the onboarding process and setting Sterile Processing professionals up for success from day one. Our guest, William Bryant, discussed the topic of getting onboarding right and building it on a competency-based model. Onboarding...

Two words: Shift wars. Each shift in a hospital department is riddled with interpersonal dynamics but the interplay between shifts is a topic we are finally shining a well-deserved light on. It's something that is a reality for many healthcare professionals and on this week's episode of Beyond Clean, we talk to 2nd shift Sterile Processing leader, Sarah B. Cruz, about her experience taking on the...

You wake up this morning, grab your cup of coffee and head into work. You get there to greet a new department - one that you have very little familiarity with - the Sterile Processing Department. You have a couple of days to observe the state of affairs and then congratulations the department is yours to manage! What would your strategy be? How would you tackle complicated issues like lack of stan...

As healthcare professionals, we go to great lengths to make sure that our Operating Rooms are safe and that the sterility of medical devices is maintained to prevent harm to patients. What if, after all that effort, the culprit for spreading illness is actually your HVAC system? A potential breeding ground for biological growth, mold and mildew, the design of your HVAC system takes on a critical r...

On October 1, 2017 a gunman opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers on Route 91 in Las Vegas, Nevada. 10 minutes later the deadliest mass shooting in US history had transpired within the blink of an eye. Little did this week's podcast guest know that the training he pursued in the military and surgical services would set him up for success finding organization in the midst of tragedy and chaos. Tun...

It stands a little over five feet tall, increases sterilization efficiencies and saves time and money. Yes, it could be your new best friend- it's the SteriCUBE and on this week's release of the Beyond Clean Vendor Spotlight series, we talk to Michele Mauzerall, CEO and Managing Partner at PMBS, LLC and Progressive Sterilization, LLC about the benefits of multiple tray sterilization technology. Ma...

When a problem strikes in Sterile Processing or the Operating Room that puts a patient at risk, the knee jerk reaction is to what? To fire the person responsible. On this Season 7 Rewind episode, we talked with a mathematics major on a full scholarship-turned-Sterile Processing leader about the cultural shift that needs to happen in order to make lasting change in our departments - a shift that lo...

Regulators want it, healthcare facilities want it, medical device manufacturers want it...what if surgical instrument validation was actually geared toward a specific standard protocol? This re-released Season 1 episode features one of the biggest names in sterile processing, Ralph Basile, who talks with Justin Poulin, Michael Matthews and Hank Balch about all things ISO certification and AAMI/AST...

Surgical instrument repair questions are such an important part of everything that we do as sterile processing professionals. David Anbari joins us to talk about preventative maintenance, accessibility and the mobile aspect of third party repair services. Who are the people repairing instrumentation and what's the difference between third party repair and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) repa...

Picture this: your hospital has access to a magic button that would reduce SPD volume by up to 100 trays per week and reduce tray sizes by over 35%. Sound too good to be true? On this release of the Beyond Clean Vendor Spotlight series, we talk to David Rowe and Dr. Martyn Knowles from Operative Flow Technologies. OpFlow, a data driven product focused on value optimization, uses actual instrument...

Surgical Services is a production-based system that relies heavily on the work done in Sterile Processing. This re-released Season 1 episode features David Taylor, President of the Resolute Advisory Group, LLC.  David's particular area of specialty lies in the operational improvement of Surgical Services and Central Sterile/Sterile Processing Departments (SPD/CS). During this interview we confront...

How do you and your department put yourselves on the map in your hospital, especially if you don't come from a business administration background? This week's Beyond Clean re-release features René Vis, Product Manager at Steelco Benelux B.V. who begins by talking about business training for sterile processing leaders. He then dives into the topic of thermometric validation. We all need validation...

This week's throwback episode of Beyond Clean gives listeners a look inside the process of gaining 510k approval and building a quality system that includes a risk analysis component. While there can be great pressure to cut corners in sterile processing in order to meet demand, Shawn Flynn , Consultant, Entrepreneur, and Medical Device Inventor, encourages technicians and managers to have the bac...

On this inaugural episode of Beyond Clean from 2017, we interviewed Michael Matthews, who was then the Manager of Central Sterile at Baptist Health in Arkansas.  Mike was a rising star in the Sterile Processing industry, who had taken a particular interest in regards to compensation and education requirements for front-line technicians. As most of you know, eventually Mike joined the Beyond Clean...

As sterile processing professionals, we crave challenging and meaningful work- why else would we be doing this? We want to learn, grow and contribute to our departments and healthcare facilities and connecting with other professionals plays a critical role in being able to do just that! In this episode we talk with Lindsay Brown to discuss the ways in which peer-to-peer and peer-to-mentor connecti...

Do we have a global surgical instrument quality crisis before us? Have you seen the data, and just as importantly, what would you do about it if you have? Leveraging data in healthcare is one of the most efficient ways to perpetuate improvement and change, but we are still on the cusp of seeing the full value to that data has to offer the Sterile Processing industry. We talked to Bryan Stuart and...

In healthcare, one of the best ways to be compliant is to be confidently compliant. Compliance with The Joint Commission's standards on infection control can be difficult to navigate and in this release of the Beyond Clean Vendor Spotlight series, we talk to Eric Einwalter, Sr. Product Manager, High Level Disinfection for CIVCO Medical Solutions, to learn how CIVCO products strengthen and empower...

Ultrasound probes are used in almost every department in healthcare today and reprocessing breeches have led to safety alerts issued by The Joint Commission in recent years. We sat down with Emily Smith, Clinical Marketing Specialist with CIVCO Medical Solutions, to discuss tangible solutions to the issues surrounding the reprocessing of ultrasound probes facing up to 75% of facilities. What do yo...

What if the one thing standing between an endoscope and a safe outcome is the acknowledgement that antibiotics have been involved in one of the deadliest cover-ups on earth? It's no secret that flexible endoscopes pose a safety risk. In fact, mishandled flexible endoscopes have been identified in ECRI's  Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2019 and have led to infectious outbreaks and death. Is s...

On the coast of Africa, standing on the deck of a Mercy Ship hospital, one individual looked out on the horizon as thousands of people lined up to receive medical care. It was a transformative moment; A moment that would be the genesis for the creation of the Safe Surgery Initiative (SSI).  We sat down and talked with Keith Miles, Executive Director of SSI. Mr. Miles who is on a mission to change...

In Sterile Processing departments surrounded on all sides by stainless steel, color tends to jump out at us. Whether it's a green handle on an insertion device, a red knee trial, or purple implant plating system, it's not uncommon to see little splashes of color in a number of different instrument trays. We sat down with Thor Rollins to have a crash course on medical device colorants, and talk abo...

With the medical device world around us changing on a daily basis, why shouldn't we expect our Sterile Processing staffing technologies to change with it? On Episode 2, Season 6 of Beyond Clean, we talk with Brian Reed about predictive staffing in CS/SPD and discuss how data can be leveraged to make staffing decisions for your department that are more than just a good guess. Tune in to hear about...

On this week's episode, Bob goes into more detail regarding the importance of collaboration with instrument manufacturers and repair specialists in developing high quality inspection programs in your Sterile Processing department. Tune in for insight and encouragement to #WorkTogetherForChange . #RealTalk #BobMarrs #BeyondClean #WeFightDirty ™ Click To Subscribe on YouTube ,  iTunes ,  Stitcher ,...

How many of your departments have an Instrument Coordinator position? How many of you want one? And how many of you have no idea what we're talking about? On this episode of Fighting Dirty, Hank makes an argument for creating a role on your Sterile Processing team whose primary focus is all things surgical instrument related. Buying, sourcing, standardizing, back order tracking, OR communicating,...