Report on WFHSS Conference Barcelona 2022

In early November 2022 I had the honour of being able to travel to Barcelona Spain to attend the WFHSS Conference.

For those who are unaware the WFHSS (world federation for hospital and sterile sciences) is the world body for sterile sciences of which the NZSSA is a member. It is run in a similar fashion to the NZSSA, however it covers 78 member groups from 70 countries around the world. Some countries like China, India, Canada, Netherlands have more than one association therefore are represented twice. You can find out what is happening around the world at the WFHSS by logging in to their website.

The conference itself was held in the Palau De Congressos Fira Montjuic. This was a very large building surrounded by numerous historical buildings.

The conference was held over two and a half days. It commenced with the opening ceremony on a Wednesday evening and finished on Saturday lunchtime. Prior to the opening of the conference on the Wednesday evening I attended the AGM of the WFHSS and was accompanied to this by Alison Stewart. The process of the meeting is very similar to our own but with a lot more nationalities in attendance. I was proud that the we, the NZ contingent were not slow in coming forward and stating our opinion when we did not agree with what was being said from other members in attendance.

The opening ceremony consisted of welcome speeches and was followed by entertainment from Spanish local Catalan dancers.

Most of the well-known trade partners were exhibiting at the conference and there were approximately 1500 attendees.

There were not as many new innovative products than what I had expected to see. However one product did catch my attention. It is called BICARmed and is a cleaning technology using sodium bicarbonate. It is used in a high tech cleaning box. The sodium bicarbonate in granules is combined with compressed air through a hand piece which uniformly and continuously strikes the surface of the instrument. Dirt is removed from the most complex instruments and via second hand piece the instrument can be rinsed. This system replaces manual and ultrasound cleaning prior to using a washer disinfector. I can see that this system or similar could be the way of the future doing away with utilising chemicals in the hand washing and pre cleaning process. Safer for the environment and safer for staff.

There were of course numerous presenters and mostly everything was presented in English. At times some presentations appeared familiar as if they were an extension of papers presented at previous conferences by the same presenters.

Many of the presentations were based around inspecting instruments with lumens and quality management in the CSSD

One presenter who stood out for me was Dr Sulisti Holmes from the National Health Service Scotland. She is the type of presenter I wish I could be. She does not use very many slides but presents using body language and expressions, humour and some stage props. This year there were several references to Elvis Presley. Humour aside her presentation resonated with me and issues I have currently been having with one of the companies over contaminated instruments.

Her topic was titled ”Investigation of the Release of Particles during Phacoemulsion Procedures.” Sulisti described an investigation she undertook following a string of post-surgical infections in patients who had undergone eye surgery. Included in this group was her elderly mother. The automatic first response from many was that it must have been caused by CSSD who were not cleaning the instruments correctly. Sulisti went to great lengths to demonstrate that the phaco hand pieces were been cleaned per MIFU. She contacted the hand piece company and they were adamant that it was nothing to do with their equipment or MIFU and it must have been the fault of CSSD and their cleaning processes. Sulisti is Scottish however is of Chinese descent. She is dogged when it comes to investigating anything. She then had one of the hand pieces cut in half and it was found that there were bits of plastic stuck in inaccessible parts of the hand piece where cleaning could not possibly occur. Still the company denied responsibility. She had numerous rounds of biological testing completed and it was found that some of the plastic that was causing issues came from the hand piece itself and there was also evidence of green particles from the table drape stuck inside inaccessible parts of the hand piece. This would have occurred if the hand piece was laid on the drape covering the patient or on the scrub trolley. The outcome of all the investigation was that the company had to concede that their product and MIFU needed to be reviewed. For Sulisti and her team the investigation paid off.

For me the message I took away is that we as sterile technicians and experts in our field need to be strong and question and confront the companies who always state that it must be our processes that are at fault. We need to stand up to theatre staff who blame CSSD. We need to know our products and how they work and question the companies on how they can see an item being cleaned in all the inaccessible parts. As sterile technicians we also need to be part of the purchasing team when surgeons and theatre staff want buy new equipment. As per the standard.

Apart from the amazing speakers the congress dinner was a special treat. It was held in the corporate areas of FC Barcelona Football team at Camp Nou. Hundreds of photos were taken by everyone that night.

This year the conference will be held in Belgium and hopefully we the NZSSA may be able to offer a scholarship for a diploma student to attend. Watch this space.

Post Script- I have discovered that batman is alive and well and the Bat cave is in the La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.