cians to lead their teams in the mission for zero patient harm.
5. Protein testing
Jeff Lawrence, MSN, administrative director of surgical services at
Florida Hospital Tampa, nominates residual protein detection tech-
nologies as the top game-changing infection control innovation. Also
known as Adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) testing, Mr. Lawrence
argues that ATP testing is a must-have for all OR, endo and SPD areas.
Through their testing and auditing of the entire sterilization process,
ATP tests have been key to his team preventing dangerous and costly
SSIs.
Testing is performed by surface sampling/swabbing any surface,
says Mr. Lawrence. A higher reading with ATP testing on a cleaned
or sterile instrument indicates that it has biological matter or
human cells still on it. Because AORN states that cleaning practices
should be measured with qualitative measures (visual observation
of cleaning process, visual inspection of cleanliness and fluorescent
marking) and quantitative measures (cultures, ATP monitoring),
these technologies are not only innovative, they are becoming best
practice in infection control. Mr. Lawrence believes using a multi-
disciplinary approach to quality assurance with fluorescent marking
and ATP testing ensures a thorough cleaning regime for surgical
instrument reprocessing.
Recently, Mr. Lawrence's team took advantage of educating their
SPD technicians on thorough cleaning practices in the decontamina-
tion area with immediate follow-up ATP testing. Having the ability to
test and receive the results within seconds let his team identify post-
cleaning presence of proteins on the some of the most difficult areas
to clean. This heightened awareness of his technicians to their clean-
ing technique, says Mr. Lawrence, and provided opportunity to coach
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