A unique approach to implementing quality improvement in decontamination practice

The most applied sterilisation method in healthcare for sterilisation of medical devices is steam. It is shown in literature, that sterilisation practices today are not completely understood [1, 2]. Literature defines “sterile” as “free of all viable organisms” [3]. Conditions to obtain sterile devices in steam sterilisation are specified in the literature [4] and standards [5]. In practice, however, it is noticed that the duration of a steam sterilisation process varies. Although the literature and standards indicate the success of a process depends on the combinations of the steriliser process, load contents, loading pattern and wrapping [5–7], no literature is found that explains the correlation between the weight of the load and the duration of the process.