Decontamination: the importance of education

Trevor Garcia, the new chair of the Institute of Decontamination Sciences (IDSc), calls for a focus on education and training within the sector, to safeguard the next generation of highly motivated and competent decontamination science staff

A major national investigation by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) into a patient safety incident has previously highlighted the importance of education in decontamination. A key recommendation of the report was to develop training. 

The Institute of Decontamination Science’s new Chairman, Trevor Garcia agrees that tackling some of the issues highlighted in the HSIB report – especially around human factors – will come down to education. 

“Reprocessing can be quite repetitive and, all too often, technicians perform the process off site and in isolation, without fully understanding the whole picture. Decontamination staff are the life blood of the sector; they need to understand the importance of what they are doing and why we do things in certain way,” commented Garcia. 

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