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In a restaurant, chefs rely on automatic dishwashers to provide a steady supply of clean, sanitized dishes and utensils. In the more demanding world of hospitals and clinics, sterile processing technicians play a similar role in sterilizing instruments and equipment for physicians, surgeons, nurses and other caregivers. It's meticulous work requiring a high level of attention to detail.

One of the first step that you need to take if you want to become a certified sterile processing technician is finding a school that offers this course. There are currently a number of schools offering this course today, but you need to choose one that will provide you a good return in your investment in time and money.

Here are the main factors that you need to consider when looking for a sterile processing technician school.

Accreditation

There are government and private organizations whose main objective is to ensure that all medical or healthcare schools offering allied healthcare courses abide to the standard rules and regulations. Only enroll in a school that is legally accredited and pos...

Becoming a professional sterile processing technician is one of the best career decisions that you can make in life. There are hundreds if not thousands of job opportunities in the market today that you can take advantage of to achieve your life goals. Unlike other careers, there is minimal competition for these jobs, as there are few certified technicians.

Here are some questions and answers to help you get a clear perspective of this profession.

What is the role of this career in healthcare?

This is one of the most common questions that students interested in this field ask. Sterile processing technicians are also referred to as central services technicians. Once you are certified and hired, ...

Nowadays, it is possible to be certified by taking a sterile processing course online. Most of the learning facilities have this feature on their website and you can access it from anywhere in the world using an internet enabled computer or smartphone.

Here are so...

The Seattle hospital that increased controls after a superbug outbreak still finds contamination 3 percent of the time

Hospitals are discovering that it's nearly impossible to clean endoscopes blamed for spreading deadly bacteria that have sparked lawsuits from patients and sent device regulators scrambling for a fix.

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Santa Ana, Ca – Currently New Jersey and New York are the only states that requires certification for Sterile Processing Technicians. However, other states are highly considering this requirement in the future. Becoming a Certified Sterile Processing Technician will give you an extra level of professionalism. It means that you have shown that you are serious in your career field and would like to ensure a higher standard of protection to your fellow healthcare workers and the public. Being certified means you are keeping up with the latest changes in the healthcare industry, especially with medical sterilization technology.

In 2015, a growing number of medical facilities such as hospita...

Doctors working to fight Ebola in West Africa must wear full body suits, gloves, and masks in 90-degree weather. They also work with limited resources — one important, but laborious aspect of treating Ebola involves recording medical information on paper. Doctors in a medical enclosure must write a patient's information down, walk to the edge of the enclosure, yell the information to their colleagues outside the tent, and then destroy the paper. Up until now, that was the safest way to contain the disease while transferring information. Now, a new Google tablet that can withstand chlorine sanitization renders that process unnecessary, Wired reports.

National City, Ca – Just recently Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center reported that 179 patients were exposed to an antibiotic resistant “superbug” during endoscopic procedures. These “superbugs” also called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, may have infected seven patients and might have been the cause of two deaths. Similar outbreaks of CRE and other infectious diseases associated with improperly cleaned or sterilized medical instruments have been reported around the nation. Last year, a Seattle Hospital was under investigation after hospital officials reported that more than 100 patients were put at risk of infection because of dirty medical inst...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced new actions to enhance the safety of reusable medical devices and address the possible spread of infectious agents between uses.

The new recommendations are outlined in a final industry guidance aimed at helping device manufacturers develop safer reusable devices, especially those devices that pose a greater risk of infection.

Medical devices intended for repeated use are commonplace in health care settings. They are typically made of durable substances that can withstand reprocessing, a multi-step process designed to remove soil and contaminants by cleaning and to inactivate microorganisms by disinfection or sterilization. While the majori...