Jaimee Jorgensen joined the Medical Affairs team with Nanosonics after 6 years as a sonographer working in maternal fetal medicine and general/vascular sonography.
“In my previous role at a healthcare facility, I was scanning general/vascular ultrasound and maternal fetal medicine. I was also helping with procedures such as biopsies and drainages. Most of the high-level disinfection workflow I learned on the job, which is in contrast to sonography schools that focus on the technical aspects of ultrasound. However, unless the facility has a standardized ultrasound probe disinfection workflow, gaps in education can result in potential risks to the patients.
Site assessments offer the opportunity to help identify those gaps in education, and work towards standardizing processes, so disinfection decisions aren’t left to guesswork and can be uniform across the healthcare facility. The assessment can also help identify damaged and soiled equipment that would come up negatively in a TJC survey.
During an assessment, we take a full inventory of all the facility’s ultrasound probes. I will often come across probes that have been nicked or damaged or are visibly soiled and we will add that to our report for the facility to be aware of. We will also re-educate on pre-cleaning and high-level disinfection of those probes during the assessment.
Recently, I went back to a hospital to present our findings from a site assessment. They were impressed with the executive summary and immediately immediately decided to improve their probe storage practices by storing the probes in specialized storage covers which help to maintain HLD status until the next procedure.
Everyone wants to do the right thing for their patients – these sonographers and infection preventionists are in the medical field because they want to help people - and they are appreciative of any recommendations that can help them mitigate risk and protect their patients.”
