Annual Report 2019

Endoscopy Center

Tomonori Yano, Yoshiko Kaneda, Natsumi Oda, Mari Takahashi, Masayoshi Yamamoto

Introduction

 In May 2017, the new endoscopic center was opened at the first floor of the Center of New Surgical and Endoscopic Development for Exploratory Technology (NEXT). The area of the endoscopy center is 2341 m3, and it is more than three times larger than the former one and is the largest center in Japan. We have a total of 16 endoscopic procedure rooms consisting of 10 ordinary procedure rooms, 4 fluoroscopy rooms, and 2 new device innovation rooms. Although the staff only consisted of medical doctors and nurses at the previous endoscopy center, a clinical engineer and laboratory technician were added at the opening of the new endoscopy center. In this endoscopy center, all staff collaborate to provide the best endoscopic and fluoroscopic procedures for cancer patients.

The Team and What We Do

 In 2019, we performed 18,620 procedures in this center. Each procedure field is presented in Table 1. As for patient safety, patients can move lying down on bed to the recovery area to prevent falls. And, patients are observed by exclusive nurses in recovery areas and their vital signs are monitored in a central. Also, we established a strict confirmation system for endoscopically taken biopsy specimens to prevent the misidentification of patients in our center.

Table 1. Number of procedures

Education

 In the endoscopy center, we developed a common format of a privilege system for gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary, and bronchoscopic procedures according to doctors` skills in order to educate our residents step by step to ensure patient safety. The technique of medical assistance for each endoscopic procedure is explained through on-the-job training led by the certified nurses, and we also held several classes regarding the practice of endoscopy. And, a staff member of our center was certified by the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society as a specialized technician for GI endoscopy in 2018

Future prospects

 We would like to expand by approximately 20% or more the total number of procedures in the next five years. Therefore, we have to keep moving ahead to enhance our ability to ensure patient safety and education of our staff in particular.