Hi

I wrote in not so long ago and asked about double sterilpeel. You gave me an excellent answer and since have gone to single steripeel.

What I am a bit confused about it that I set up an inservice for the staff on steripeel and got the Rep from Intermed company who supply us with the sterilpeel bags. They get the bags from Finland where the manufacturer is.

The Rep showed a video on steripeel which showed that you can double steripeel and this is what the company has said. I told her what your answer was and said I would e-mail it to her.

We follow the Australian standards which are based on the UK standards.

Can you give me a bit more information on double steripeel and why we should not use this practice and what do the UK standards say.

Thank you for your support

Judy Hatton
Team Leader for Quality and Training
Sterile Production Centre
Wellington Hospital
New Zealand

Hi Judy,

I apologize for leaving the impression that double peel pouching items is a prohibited practice. Sequential steripeel peel pouches are in fact applicable in some rare situations where you wish to group items to prevent them scattering when the package is opened, such as when you are packaging bone screws.
In general, using sequential peel pouches is a wasteful practice because it does not add to either sterility maintenance of the items or to patient safety.
I follow AAMI (Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation), who write many of the ISO standards for medical sterilization. Per AAMI's 'Good Hospital Practice: Steam Sterilization and Sterility Assurance' section 4.4.2.1:

"....If one peelable pouch is to placed inside another pouch, [then] care should taken to select the appropriate sequential sizing...to allow for adequate air removal and steam penetration, especially if a gravity displacement sterilizer is to be used...."

This language means that AAMI does not say that using sequential peel pouches is required or even recommended, just that using sequential peel pouches is permitted so long as care is taken. In AAMI-ese, 'should' is a goal to strive for, and 'must' is a minimum requirement, required either by US Federal law or by hospital accrediting agencies. The AAMI statement basically says 'if you choose to double peel pack, then you should...'

AORN (Association of Operating Room Nurses) Recommended Practices also support the use of peel pouches in a single layer.
http://www.aorn.org/products/standards.htm

The sellers of peel pouches have no incentive to tell their customers that the customers are spending twice as much on packaging as is required. The vendors feel dismay at the decrease in the size of their commissions when you cut your packaging usage in half. This will be more than counterbalanced by the thrill felt by the people doing the budget when they realize that the labor costs for packaging also go done when employees only have to do the packaging once!

I hope this clears up any confusion from my first posting on this topic

Regards,
Pete Bobb
the Netherlands