Microbiology Basics: Sterilization, Disinfection, and What Survives Them
An instrument tray comes out of the autoclave, a stethoscope gets wiped with an alcohol swab, and a blood pressure cuff gets wiped with a disinfectant wipe.
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Microbiology Basics: Sterilization, Disinfection, and What Survives Them
Use this episode as a focused review of the control-of-microbial-growth chapter of your microbiology text, together with the sterilization and disinfection guidance your program draws on. It fixes the words first — sterilization, disinfection, antisepsis, sanitization, degerming, and pasteurization — and the difference between a method that kills and one that only stops growth. It then ranks organisms by how hard they are to kill, from prions and bacterial endospores down to vegetative bacteria and enveloped viruses, and uses that ranking to explain the numbers: the autoclave's 121 degrees Celsius at 15 to 20 pounds per square inch, boiling's failure on endospores, pasteurization at 72 degrees for 15 seconds, dry heat, 0.2 micrometre membrane filtration and HEPA air filtration, and the two kinds of radiation. The chemical section sorts germicides into high, intermediate, and low level, and the episode closes with the critical, semi-critical, and non-critical categories that decide what gets sterilized, high-level disinfected, or simply cleaned. A retrieval round finishes the episode, covering the words, the resistance order, the autoclave's numbers, and when soap and water replaces hand rub.
Source material: Microbiology: Canadian Edition, Chapter 14, Controlling Microbial Growth; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Guideline for Disinfection and Sterilization in Healthcare Facilities; the Public Health Agency of Canada's Routine Practices and Additional Precautions for Preventing the Transmission of Infection in Healthcare Settings; and Nursing Fundamentals 2e, Chapter 9.
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