Partnership efforts continue to support Foresterhill decontamination efforts during shutdown

A herculean effort continues to ensure surgical work can take place at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary while NHS Grampian’s decontamination unit – which sterilises and prepares surgical instruments – at Foresterhill remains closed. 

 

Decontamination specialist staff are continuing to operate the decontamination unit at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen 24/7, and the team is continuing to work alongside a number of other Scottish health boards to process as many trays of instruments as they possibly can.  

 

The team’s manual washing process – put in place to support the decontamination effort before equipment is processed elsewhere – successfully moved to a temporary location in the University of Aberdeen’s Life Sciences building last week.  

 

Alan Wilson, director of infrastructure and sustainability for NHS Grampian explained: “This move was, in itself, ambitious within the timescale. You might imagine it’s just a sink or two but it involved sourcing sinks from elsewhere, moving chemicals, trolleys, cabinets, shelving and protective equipment, as well as our computer systems which log where instruments go. The University of Aberdeen making their facility available to us at very short notice enabled us to progress this solution – it would have been difficult to accommodate the manual wash elsewhere locally in the short term.” 

 

Work is also ongoing to determine the source of an unknown substance discovered on a small number of instruments during processing at the beginning of October.  

 

Alan added: “We sought the expertise of NHS Scotland Assure, which supports health boards with compliance and risk management, to carry out a sampling process. It has now been agreed that further testing is required to give us the assurances we need about what led to this issue, and this work is underway. We are very grateful to our national colleagues for their ongoing support and input. 

 

“Our old machine washers have now been removed and the refurbishment project now relies on the delivery and installation of the new ones if we are to get the facility operational again by Christmas. We’re doing absolutely everything we can in the meantime to take this opportunity to improve the long-term resilience of the CDU building, with extensive repairs of everything from the ventilation to the replacement of flooring.” 

 

Approximately 753 elective surgical procedures and 739 dental outpatient appointments have been postponed since the Foresterhill CDU was taken out of use.

 

Theatre activity has been steadily increasing beyond emergency, caesarean and most urgent patients in recent weeks, and many people whose procedures were postponed have now been re-booked.   

 

Paul Bachoo, acute medical director for NHS Grampian commented: “This has not been an easy time for anyone and the work ongoing to address this situation and keep the giant wheels of NHS Grampian turning is commendable. We can’t thank everyone enough.

 

“Our theatres are operational, as they always have been for all of our emergency and urgent work, and this work is scaling up successfully and significantly. This wouldn’t be possible without the help of many, many people and for that we’re hugely grateful. 

 

“We’re continuing to maximise our use of national treatment centres and we are continuing to do everything we possibly can to reduce waiting times. We’re absolutely committed to providing the best possible service to all of our patients.”

 

The Chair of the Board of NHS Grampian, Alison Evison recently extended her thanks, on behalf of the board, to all staff for their efforts. “Thank you to everyone involved in different ways for the tremendous work you have been doing to maintain services. We appreciate the huge contribution you have each made to supporting patients across Grampian at this challenging time and would like to express our heartfelt gratitude,” she commented.