The re-use of single use instruments is a process that can save you money and benefit the environment, as Daniel J Vukelich explains. Worldwide, healthcare providers are struggling to find safe, reliable, and affordable solutions to reduce the financial and environmental burden of providing excellent care. The Arab world is not immune to these same pressures.
Background
A global solution hospitals have used to address limited resources is to reuse many medical devices labeled by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) as ‘single-use’. Of course, the reuse of single-use devices, or SUDs, raises important safety, ethical and legal concerns. The solution is not to ban the reuse of SUDs, because doing so would not address the problems of growing medical device costs and waste. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that SUD reuse bans do not work because hospital reuse of SUDs could continue to take place in the shadows, without protocols or oversight, ultimately leaving patients and providers in a worse predicament.
Read the Arab Medical Hygeine article here including Background, Possible Solutions, Reduce Costs and Waste, and Global Overview of Medical Device Re-use.