Medical instrumentation and nosocomial infection.

A current major concern of the medical community is the incidence of nosocomial, or hospital-related infection. One of the chief ways a patient may get a nosocomial infection is through medical instrumentation which has been improperly sterilized or incorrectly utilized. The clinical engineer, because of his critical involvement with medical instrumentation, must, in addition to his conventional duties, instruct hospital personnel in the proper sterilization and use of medical instrumentation. In order to accomplish this, the clinical engineer must understand the relationship between nosocomial infection and medical instrumentation, and he must become familiar with basic sterilization procedures as they apply to each class of medical instrumentation.