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NMH Annual Rep t | 2020 157 Quality and Safety Services T he Hospital Sterile Services Department (HSSD) is committed to the highest level of quality in the decontamination (cleaning, disinfection and sterilisation) of Reusable Invasive Medical Devices (RIMD). Sterility assured reprocessing of RIMD is achieved through adherence with Decontamination Policies, Procedures and Guidelines. Activity levels continue to remain high year on year. In total 32,207 packs were sterilised in 2020. COVID-19 restrictions and the cancellation of some elective theatre cases did not have much impact on the productivity in HSSD. Non-conformance / complaints were 2% of production. There was 543 hours downtime for the year, mainly due to the aging Autoclave equipment. The department needs to be relocated to replace aging decontamination equipment and to comply with decontamination standards. All staff are up to date on mandatory training and manual handling. Due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, no Irish Decontamination Training Days took place. Hospital Sterile Services Quality/Risk A departmental risk register is in place and there are escalation procedures should this be necessary. The following audits took place during the year: Daily Quality Control Audit, Weekly Automatic Control Test, Monthly Key Performance Indicators, Quarterly Hygiene Audits and Annual Infection Control Audit. Infection Control Four Environmental Monitoring audits took place in 2020 where we sampled the air and surfaces from all rooms and water from the reverse osmosis water treatment unit. The results were discussed at the quarterly Infection Control meeting Audits were also carried out in Fetal Assessment on the manual and automated cleaning of 'Semi-Critical' probes. Hygiene services conducted monthly audits of HSSD.