HSDU Sterile Services Technician

Job overview

Please note that this post is Part of One LSC – a corporate collaboration hosted by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust and providing Estates and Facilities Services to Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The Sterile Services Department is responsible for the decontamination and reprocessing of re-usable medical devices. These are instrument sets used for surgical operations. This is accomplished using dedicated washers and sterilizers, that require the sets to be dismantled, decontaminated, reassembled and sterilized before being returned to the operating theatres. The advertised role is for a technician to primarily undertake the above role as part of a larger team. On occasions the technician may be required to drive a Light Goods Vehicle (LGV) during periods of staff shortages or emergency requests.

Main duties of the job

To decontaminate re-usable medical devices effectively and in line with departmental deadlines requiring each set to be dismantled prior to cleaning and reassembled and checked prior to sterilization. Technicians must ensure that the instrumentation is accurate against the instrument checklists both at receipt and at dispatch and has been recorded on the tracking system.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

You will be required to work to strict adherence of an accredited Quality Management System (QMS) that the department is required to maintain in order to retain its accreditation with Medical Devices Directives Effective communication with colleagues, supervisors and Managers is crucial. Information about instrument sets may need to be conveyed back to theatres or to other colleagues during shift changes.

As part of this role the department is required to collect dirty and distribute sterile instrumentation around numerous ward and clinic areas.Ensure that stock, sets, and instrumentation is correctly rotated upon return to wards and departments to restrict the amount of sets reaching expiry. Input data to produce checklists, labels and delivery notes using the departments track & trace system. The track & trace system enables all items to be tracked at each stage of the process thus providing an assurance that all instrumentation had undergone the correct and complete process