Did you know that you should name and address medical waste? This is very important when preparing medical waste for pick up. Apart from that, there are several other processes that must be followed when preparing medical waste for pick up. According to NCBI, hospitals produce no less than five million tons of medical waste each year. It's crucial for every hospital to stick to the correct medical waste disposal processes. Here's how you can prepare for medical waste disposal.
One of the most important steps when it comes to preparing medical waste for pickup is separating the different types. This is important to ensure that the waste can be managed properly. You must never mix different types of medical waste. Basically, there are five primary classes. This includes pharmaceutical waste, RCRA hazardous waste, trace chemotherapy waste, Sharps, and biohazardous waste. It's also important to ensure that anyone handling medical waste protects their hands with impermeable gloves to minimize exposure.
This is very important for appearance and physical strength. If you are preparing medical waste for collection, you must use resilient containers that are strong enough to not break when being handled. Basically, your containers for medical waste should be puncture, burst, leak, and tear-resistant. You must also use color-coded containers. For instance, sharps should be placed in red containers within a closable secondary container. Another thing you should keep in mind when it comes to containers for medical waste is to avoid overfilling them at all costs.
While this might seem like an easy task, it's not. In fact, it's a very important step in the medical waste preparation process. You should ensure that whoever is preparing your medical waste knows the correct color, ink, and typography. For instance, medical waste containers should be labeled with the terms “Infectious,” “Medical Waste,” and “Biohazardous.” The labels should also have the International Biological Hazard Symbol. For containers with no background color, you should use red lettering with a contrasting background color.
Taking time to prepare your medical waste for medical waste disposal will help ensure that you don't have problems with the medical waste company when they come to collect it. If there are any gaps in your medical waste preparation process, you need to fix them as soon as possible.