“You’d be amazed at these wealthier countries. They spend a lot of money on decontamination equipment, they put a lot of money towards building new departments, and then they come here and they’re amazed at what we’re able to achieve in a building that’s 100 years old. They have the money to spend but they don’t have standards or operating procedures.”

Trevor is describing the international visitors his team receives every year the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital – professionals from the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and the UAE.

The Mater is one of Ireland’s largest level four acute teaching hospitals, with 17 national specialist centres, 16 operating theatres, and just shy of a thousand beds on site. Its decontamination department is, by any measure, one of the busiest and most complex in the country.

And yet, what draws international visitors are the standards that turned it into a Centre of Excellence.

How It Started

In 2018 and 2019, the Mater began developing its robotic surgery programme. Every department was asked to assess what upgrades it would need to support that ambition.

For CSSD, that meant a significant investment in low temperature sterilisation. Trevor’s team ran a tender, purchased a new steriliser, one that had just been released to the European market, and became the first unit in Europe to implement it alongside a full ecosystem of electronic traceability.

A few months later, the manufacturer got in touch. Their head of education flew over to visit. What she found surprised her.

In the five or six months that we had used the system, we were already the highest users of their traceability system. I showed them exactly what we did and they were really taken aback by our processes, how my staff deal with these medical devices, the new technology we had implemented. And from there we were asked to be a centre of excellence. It’s completely non-commercial.

What Centre of Excellence Actually Means in Practice

“I work in a unique place. The hospital promotes an environment of teaching, learning, research and innovation. So that really helps us as managers that we’re able to look at this new technology and innovative products as potentially products that we could implement here.”

Visitors come from across the globe to exchange experience with a team that has developed strong standards and is willing to be open about how they got there.

“It’s very much about me learning from them as much as they want to learn from us.”

That culture of openness extends to the wider profession. TU Dublin has now educated nearly two and a half thousand decontamination staff across Ireland, and bodies like the IDI and IDSC are creating the kind of professional community where people share outcomes, discuss challenges, and push standards forward together.

Trevor sees this as one of the most significant shifts in the field during his career.

Innovation as a By-Product of Solving Real Problems

One of the most compelling stories in this episode is the Bicarmed manual cleaning system and the way Trevor tells it says a great deal about how innovation actually works at the Mater.

“During the pandemic it was very well documented of the risks associated with manual cleaning. Manual cleaning is in our standards so it’s something that we must do, but it’s an aerosol related procedure that poses risks to the decontamination staff. My goal was to introduce this as a mechanism to reduce the risk.”

After trialling the system, the results went well beyond what Trevor had anticipated. Over the course of a year, the team reduced PPE waste by 13% and consumables (chemistry, plastic brushes, materials) associated with the manual cleaning process by 40%.

Clinical waste costs fell significantly too, a particularly meaningful outcome in Ireland where clinical waste cannot be incinerated domestically and must be shipped to mainland Europe.

Health Innovation Ireland heard about the system and asked Trevor’s team to submit a pitch. The product won and it is now being adopted across the UK.

What the Bicarmed story illustrates is something Trevor returns to throughout this conversation – that meaningful innovation in healthcare tends to start with a problem someone in the department is actually living with, not with a product looking for a use case.

The Patient Behind Every Decision

For patients, coming to hospital is a very stressful and worrying time. We don’t want to have to cancel patients because medical devices aren’t available.

When Trevor is asked how he keeps patient outcomes central to every decision, his answer is straightforward.

I never have to worry about costs. Whenever I’m at committees or chairing committees, I always try to put myself in the patient’s position, or in the position of a loved one that’s here with a patient.

A Message to the Profession

Trevor’s closing message to other decontamination professionals is characteristically direct: get your work in front of the people who need to understand it. Invite clinicians to the department, present at IDI and IDSC, celebrate the small wins as loudly as the large ones, because for too long, decontamination wasn’t celebrated at all.

For long periods of time, decontamination wasn’t even discussed. If you went to some of your clinicians in your hospital and asked them where the CSD department was, they didn’t know. They didn’t even know what CSSD meant. It’s definitely about promotion, getting it out there  and not being afraid.

The Mater’s story is proof of what becomes possible when a decontamination team is given the space, the support, and the freedom to keep raising the bar!

Join the Conversation

If this episode resonated with you, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your own career journey or experiences with the decontamination community by emailing us at marketing@atherahealthcare.com

About Behind The Mask

Behind The Mask is Athera Healthcare’s monthly video series highlighting the people, partnerships, and perspectives that drive surgical excellence. Each episode goes beyond technology to uncover the roles and relationships critical to delivering better patient outcomes.

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