The Principles of Medical Device Decontamination

important where exposure occurs following sorting and manual cleaning procedures for instruments/scopes. • Key health assessments where there is risk of harm due to occupational exposure, specifically to exposure in the decontamination environment to cleaning or High Level Disinfection (HLD) products and/or PPE. Assessment may include e.g. Skin health, lung function, fit testing of respirators, in addition to routine OH service like hearing and eyesight testing. • Referral to or provision of specialist services to improve psychological well-being in the workplace e.g. counselling. • Retain up-to-date records of employee health. • Support line/dept. managers in managing and promoting the health of their staff and appropriate campaigns that improve staff health. Occupational health records of an individual employee are confidential and held separately from hospital records. Such records are only accessible by occupational health practitioners and cannot be shared without informed consent. All staff groups should be up to date with routine immunisations to include tetanus, diphtheria, polio and measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). There may be different immunisation requirements depending on the employee’s job role although all employees at occupational risk of contracting communicable disease have a duty of care to reduce the risks of transmissible infections to others. Immunisation status for mandatory vaccinations, should be confirmed to the line managers of the specific decontamination units. Line managers may get consent from the individual employee to keep a record on immunisations in support of outbreaks/incidents of infection workplace related. Comprehensive guidance for the immunisation requirements for healthcare staff is available online:

• UKHSA (2013): ‘Immunisation against Infectious disease, Chapter 12: Immunisation of healthcare and laboratory staff’ 15

The registered professional and all healthcare employees have a duty to provide accurate details as requested in accordance with their employment contract and

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