Newport News, Va. (November 1 ,2007)  Sterilizing surgical instruments in Bangladesh – without the benefit of electricity and modern steam machines – challenged Sharon Greene-Golden, CRCST, to “think outside of the box” and use a process that kept patients free from communicable diseases.

The methods she used became the basis for a training program that Golden, manager of sterile processing at Mary Immaculate Hospital, presented in September at the Aesculap Academy in Germany. The Academy is a leading international forum for professional development and training in the field of medicine.

“Leading Outside the Boundaries,” the title of Golden’s presentation, provided a look at sterilization processes in the third-world country of Bangladesh. Her experiences came during four mission trips to the country with Project Bangladesh, a group performing general surgery.

“As leaders in this field, you have to think outside of the box and you need to know the specialty inside and out so you know where the boundaries are,” Golden explained. A company donated cleaning solutions for the mission trip, which Golden used to clean the surgical instruments. She then put them in a pot of water at about 98 degrees Centigrade for 20 minutes. Physicians kept tabs on the 20 patients who underwent surgery during the trip, and all of them did well, with no nosocomial infections developing.

“We’re truly blessed to be where we are today with sterile processing techniques,” Golden said. “Bangladesh uses equipment and techniques from about four decades ago, and in the villages where we were, they didn’t even have enough electricity to keep the equipment running all day.”

Golden, who will make a fifth mission trip to Bangladesh in January, has worked at Mary Immaculate for about two years. She has a total of 22 years’ experience in sterile processing and currently serves as the secretary-treasurer of the International Association of Healthcare Central Service Material Management. In this capacity, she travels to many regional and national meetings, where she has made other presentations. On November 19, she will be presenting her Bangladesh lecture to the Mid-Atlantic Central Service Association annual meeting in Atlantic City, N.J.