RE: AUTOCLAVE

Mark Hedberg — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 13:14:20 GMT

[quote user="PSA-David"]

you think that's bad, At my previous practice the student nurse thought it was a good idea to use surgical spirit and start the cycle!!! luckily we realised before it was too late.

[/quote]

Eek!

RE: AUTOCLAVE

PSA-David — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 10:20:55 GMT

you think that's bad, At my previous practice the student nurse thought it was a good idea to use surgical spirit and start the cycle!!! luckily we realised before it was too late.

RE: AUTOCLAVE

Sal the 1st — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 21:03:30 GMT

what sort of autoclave is it? and what sort of oil - is it crystal clear of darker coloured? The reason I ask is that many moons ago I worked at a practice that used one of the mark II little sisters - cracking little machine and there are thousands still in use.

This is how it happened with this machine. The water chamber was showing low on the dipstick so the person in theatre topped it up with distilled water from the 5 litre container - which unfortunately wasn't a 5 litre container of water but was liquid paraffin but the mistake wasn't realised until a fair amount of liq p was aleady in the water tank. Boss got involved and said it wasn't the end of the world just drain the tank (which we were told later was the absolute worst thing we could have done - what we should have done is siphon the oil off the top not drain it through the whole machine. The machine was fixable it was taken away for service, dismantled, detergent put through all the pipework and then steam cleaned but it wasn't something they could do on site. Is there any chance at all this has happened with yours?

A little test I was shown by somebody who serviced autoclaves - fill the water tank to highest working level and then use a piece of filter paper to 'swab' the waters surface. dry out your wet filter paper and if it shows signs of transparency (oil patches) or anything other than a clean filter paper when its dry then the contaminant is in the water tank. If it is oil then you may even be able to see it floating on the surface of the water.

Have you checked your supply of distilled water? is it ok?