The Theatres team consists of registered nurses, operating department practitioners, surgical care practitioners, healthcare assistants and ancillary staff. The qualified theatre staff are highly trained and all have a special interest in cardiothoracic surgery.
There are five operating theatres with adjoining anaesthetic rooms on the first floor of the surgical unit. Each theatre is equipped to carry out the full range of cardiac, thoracic and transplant operations. Three theatres have facilities for remote viewing of operations, in the lecture theatre, by visiting surgeons or staff from other hospitals. There is a 4-bed recovery area adjacent to the five theatres. Procedures undertaken include coronary artery bypass grafts, valve repair, valve replacement, heart and lung transplantation, mechanical cardiac assist device implantation and a wide variety of thoracic operations and endoscopic procedures.
The Sterile Services department is responsible for the disinfection of all reusable medical devices for the operating theatres, wards and various other departments, including Critical Care and Radiology, as well as external customers.
The department uses automated wash/disinfectors and utilises steam and gas plasma sterilisation techniques. Using a Health Edge Traceability System it tracks all instruments and related products throughout the decontamination/sterilisation process and to its subsequent use.
The department is the first in the area to have achieved both national and European accreditation for carrying out tasks of sterilisation and decontamination of reusable medical devices. It is also accredited with BS ISO 9002:2000, BS ISO 13485: 2003 and Directive 93/42/EEC (sterilisation aspects only) for the disinfection, inspection, assembly, moist heat and gas plasma sterilisation of single instruments, instrument trays and procedure packs.
The Technical Support Service department is responsible for the maintenance of the majority of the medical equipment used at Royal Papworth Hospital. Every piece of equipment, which the Trust owns, is registered on a database so that a full working history can be maintained on each item.
The department is staffed by a manager and technicians with expertise in electronic and mechanical engineering, and Technical Support Services is registered with ISO 9002.
