Kimberly Saunders

Reprocessing medical equipment is an area Kim has worked in for more than a decade. She is currently a registered technician and member of the New Zealand Sterile Scientific Association.

Kim’s sterilisation journey began 11 years ago at the University of Otago Dental School, a place where she worked while completing her certification in sterile services through The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand.

Two years later and with a desire to delve deeper into more technical medical equipment and its safety, Kim took on the role as a registered technician in the sterile services department of the Dunedin Hospital. 

More recently, she has stepped into the role as a sterile services education and quality facilitator where she trains new staff over the course of 3-6 months in the various daily sterile duties that are required; ranging from reprocessing flexible endoscopes to the correct equipment to use in theatre’s and everything in-between. 

Currently Kim is based in the day surgery/outpatient clinical team, overseeing fellow team members and ensuring doctors, surgeons and nursing are empowered with clean, sterile, safe products when treating patients at the hospital.

Kim is a member of the Southern District Health Boards Sterile Service Quality Group; a collective of surgeons, technicians, heads of department, allied health leads, hospital quality leads, and theatre nurses who meet monthly to track quality of equipment, non conformities equipment load, patterns and more.

In 2018, Kim was able to share global sterilisation best practices with her place of employment, Dunedin Hospital, as a result of attending the Federal Sterilising Research Advisory Council conference in Sydney. She was granted a scholarship by the New Zealand Sterile Sciences Association to be part of this event that draws specialist leaders from around the world.

While in Sydney, Kim was invited to the new Northern Beaches hospital to see first-hand the design and flow of equipment for sterile services. And today, she is part of a team inputting into the development of two new units being constructed at the Dunedin Hospital. Kim says there are so many seemingly tiny actions when it comes to the sterilisation of instruments and devices, that if not performed correctly, can have a significant negative ripple effect, impacting patients and their well being. And therefore, her desire is that every person reached through the sterilisation training, is able to provide better patient care in their own medical setting.