Cleansing and Sterilization of Podiatry Instruments - Essay Example

"Cleansing and Sterilization of Podiatry Instruments" is an outstanding example of a paper on surgery and rehabilitation.
Podiatry instruments are sharp surgical tools used by doctors and surgeons in the course of their operations. They include forceps, nippers, scissors, elevators, nail files, and dressers among others. Healthcare services should be affordable to all and one way of cutting down the cost is by using surgical tools instead of throwing them. Nurses separate the more decontaminated tools and send them to a decontamination plant where they are cleaned and sold back at a lower rate. In other cases, the sterilization process takes place at the health facility. The tools used are made of stainless steel and are quite expensive. Buying these instruments repeatedly would cost the hospitals a great deal (Churchill Livingstone 2010, 330). Podiatry instruments are taken through a long procedure of sterilization and decontamination for affection control. For example, after contamination, the instruments are sterilized using automated washer –disinfectant

Infection control policy should be practiced to avoid health care based infections. The physicians should be fully aware of hygiene procedures, accident policy, environmental policy, and medicine policy. They should at all times wash their hands with a good hand wash and have protective equipment. Some of the long time benefits of cleansing and sterilizing podiatry tools are to reduce the quality of waste disposed of. Health facilities incur huge costs in disposing of their waste. Reusing podiatry instruments serves to ease the burden. According to the legal requirements, hospitals should incinerate sharp tools to minimize risk to the public. Pollution is a big threat in the contemporary society, recycling of these instruments reduces the quantity of waste emitted to the environment by the health facilities (Floyd, Mansmann, 2007 33).

Disposable instruments should not be favored over the use of sterilized podiatry tools as they are a big source of pollution to the environment. They are expensive and increase treatment costs. The legal authorities require health facilities to ensure proper disposal of the waste but in some cases, they fail and pose a great risk to the people around. For example, in the recent past, it was reported that a health facility in India contaminated the water in a nearby river, which is also used by the surrounding communities (Mandy, Lucas, & Lucas 2009, 40).  Some scholars argue against the reusing of podiatry tools claiming that some facilities may fail to sterilize them well. A patient in Minnesota contracted foot infection after getting a nail surgery. Despite the long, tedious procedure used in sterilization and disinfecting the tools, the results are worth the risk. Proper disinfection procedures should be followed.

Legal requirements and legislation involved in sterilization, in clinics advocate that sterilizers should be used under the right temperatures, and only trained personnel should be involved in the process. The right measurements should be used when diluting the disinfectant. The emergence of variant Creutzfeld Jakob Disease (vCJD) as an important pathogen in man is another factor considered in cleansing and sterilization of podiatry instruments. The legal framework requires Maintenance and validation records of sterilizers (Snippet view 1998, 60) ‎. The state is responsible for caring out audits to ensure the right protocols are used.