Eqipment ashore 5 - Establishment of central sterile unit
Claire Taylor
Service: 1968 - 1996
Rate: QARNNS Matron-in-Chief and Tri-Service Director of Nurse Education
Claire joined the QARNNS (Queen Alexandra Royal Naval Nursing Service) in 1967 as a State Registered Nurse and State Certified Midwife. She worked at Royal Naval Hospital M'Tarfa in Malta, RNH Haslar and HMS Ganges until 1973 when she left the service to work in Papua New Guinea.
On rejoining in 1975 she became a Sister Tutor and undertook a number of teaching posts primarily at RN Medical Services School Haslar. In 1987 she was appointed to the new Tri-Service body at MoD in London. During the Gulf War she was based in London as Deputy Matron-in-Chief. In 1994, she became Matron-in-Chief, together with the post (in 1996) of Tri-Service Director of Nurse Education.
Find out what difference the introduction of a central sterile unit made Nurse's work.
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Extract Text (Duration 1.31)
This is where you have pre-packed sterilised dressings in various sizes, and nursing equipment that is ready for use. Before the autoclaving of this type of equipment was available, nurses spent a long time either boiling up instruments in water boilers and making up dressing packs, getting together the cotton wool, lint, things like that, and making them into small, medium and large dressing packs. That was time consuming and there was also the problem that you might not have all the equipment or all the dressings actually in the pack that you needed.  With the central sterile supply you had everything in a standardised pack and you knew that if the package was sealed, then the contents were sterile.
Nobody would do that these days 1960s
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Maltese medical facilities 1970s
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Establishment of central sterile unit
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