GEDSA Stay Connected: What Is It

Feeding patients unable to eat food normally have to be fed by means of a tube. This has been the accepted procedure for decades with people from all stages of life benefitting equally by this system. However, the enteral system comes with its own challenges as well. While most hospitals and other medical facilities make use of specific feeding tubes for providing nutrition to their patents including the neonates, the connectors utilized for passing the nutrients and drugs into the body was not standardized. This led to mishaps primarily arising out of misconnection. There have been instances of a new born baby being fed with urine simply because the care giver had connected two different kinds of tubes together.

Finger pointing and assigning blame after such incidents is not going to solve matters though and concrete steps need to be taken to stop the possibility of misconnections forever. The main challenge that the proponents of change faced was to standardize each component associated with the system. The feeding system usually comes with four distinct components namely a container that holds the nutritive material; a set that connects to the bag/ bottle for administration of the nutrition; finally a feeding tube as well as a syringe to aid the feeding. The different components could be sourced individually from four different manufacturers too. This often led to the issue of misconnection as there was not standard design to adhere to.

Members of the, “Global Enteral Device Supplier Association” or GEDSA that had been formed in 2013 recognized the threat to life of the patients and came together to find a means of resolving the issue. The core idea focused on manufacture of a standardized connecting system that would be introduced to all the manufacturers of medical equipment at the same time. Implementing the system would not only avoid confusion about employing the feeding tubes but would also help to continue the process unhindered with each component of the system being totally compatible. The end result would of course be patient safety, a goal that caused numerous manufacturers, facilities and patient care personnel to come together.

FDA was concerned about patient safety too and released a letter titled, “The Use of Enteral Device Connectors that Reduce Risk of Misconnection and Patient Injury,” soon after in 2018. GEDSA was elated to find the government behind their endeavor and made sure to gather support for the cause. The final product was manufactured in complied with the ‘International Standards Organization (ISO) 80369-3.’ It is sourced as ENFit today with the manufacturers, distributors, dealers and various health care facilities being urged to complete adopting it according to the specifications.

The GEDSA stay connected is aimed at educating all those concerned with health care facilities as well as manufacture of medical equipment. The web resource of the association also offers various resources that will help the health care workers to make the transition perfectly, well within the time limit.