EFHSS Questions and Answers - Question Q00694

Is it enough one window of transfer between a clean and a dirty area inside a CSSD or is there any norm in Europe that oblies to have a double window? Thank you for the help.

Mariana,

Here in the UK we have a published standard for CSSD's which is HBN 13. According to this you need two transfer hatches between the Washroom and the Packing room. One will be for the transfer of manually washed items to the packing room which cannot pass through a washer-disinfector and the other is for returning washer-disinfector carriages and baskets from the packing room to the washroom. Both of these transfer hatches must be airlocked with inner and outer interlocking doors.

However in my department we have installed a single drying cabinet which allows items that are handwashed to be dryed and passed through to the packing room. You can however programme your washer-disinfectors to perform a drying cycle which is separate and used when necessary. We also have an automatic return hatch which only accomodates the return of baskets and carriages from the packing room back to the washroom. The reason I like this arrangement is that the hatch can only be used to return items from clean to dirty and so cannot be misused when staff want to take a short cut to the packing room. Cleaning and disinfection have become vital parts of the decontamination process so it is imperative that all effort is made to process items through an automated washer-disinfector and that manual cleaning is kept to a minimum and controlled.