When we think about doctors, what is the first thing we envision? For many it’s the hospital, the sick patients, and the medical surgical instruments. Of all these things, the most important is the front line of defense to the patient, the instruments. If the hospital is accommodating, lighting is good, and the doctor is well trained and professional, but his instruments are either missing, lacking, in poor shape, or in poor repair, this could be the difference between life and death for the patient.
Doctors are well aware of this important fact and so are the many organizations that assure medical surgical instruments are in good repair and the hospital is stocked with the tools they need. Even if you have a private practice, you are required to have the right tools for whatever surgery or treatment you’re performing. Your tools need to be in optimal shape, although used is ok, there is a limit to how much you can let your tools deteriorate before it is illegal as well as unethical to use them. Anything that, for example, will be used in surgery, touching the inner workings of a human (or for vets, animals) body must pass a strict inspection and must be sterilized as well.
Hospitals are inspected constantly to make sure the medical surgical instruments as well as the rest of the facility passes muster. Organizations that do this have been created for a variety of reasons over the years, mainly the lawsuits that have come from problems caused by faulty or corroded equipment. These groups have passed legislatures that create laws that govern these inspections. There was once a time when doctors’ tools and facilities as well as their very practice of medicine weren’t under such scrutiny, but luckily those days are far in the past.
Today, when a doctor purchases new equipment, the manufacture of the equipment is required to provide a warranty for the item and a guarantee that they passed stringent safety inspections as well as being built with certain quality standards. All these things make our medical facilities, doctors, and surgeries safer for the patient, the doctors, and assure that the equipment that the doctor uses is not going to cause complications inherent in past accidents such as using non-sterile equipment or improperly manufactured equipment.
