Behind our innovations are the brilliant minds who are responsible for ensuring that our solutions offer surgeons high-quality tools that are reliable and enable the best outcomes for patients. That’s why, this month, we’re inviting you to meet the inspiring members of our team here at Eakin Surgical. In our first article, we speak with Product Development and Training Manager, Maria Lea, who gives us an exclusive insight into what she cherishes most about her role – and why her favourite product is a carefully designed single-use device used for cutting and removing small pieces of bone during surgery.
What does your job entail?
As a Product Development and Training Manager, my main job is to train internal colleagues. This includes orientation and training sessions for new starters as well as supporting the development of existing employees who may want or need to brush up their skills or expand their knowledge across various aspects of the business. I also train our international distributors; for example, on the day of the Queen’s funeral, I was training our friends in Australia at 7am! And I also trained the team in the Middle East who we are visiting soon for more in-person training.
This includes producing training manuals and collateral, keeping records of training, evaluating our programmes, and maintaining best practice. I also troubleshoot on any sales areas that might need and act as a customer contact for any issues or questions concerning our various products.
What do you like most about your job?
The best way I can sum up why I love my job is that I’m proud of our people, our products and the positive outcomes our products create. With our emphasis on making sure patients have access to clean, sterile instruments, knowing that my friends and family have the potential to benefit from these products is something that makes me happy. Now that I’m training our internal colleagues and distributors it also means that I am able to spread the Eakin Surgical message further afield and ensure more people have the ability to be treated using them and therefore experience the benefits.
I also love to be challenged. I love questions on why we do what we do, and also questions about the industry. Particularly as our company was founded to answer one very important challenge, which is to ensure that instruments that are routinely used in surgery and which are increasingly complex and notoriously difficult to clean are fit for surgical purpose, i.e., can help to perform safe surgery.
Training people from different backgrounds and with different needs also makes you think more deeply around the subject and can challenge your thinking helping you learn a lot more in the process.
What product line do you like most?
Our unrivalled range of single-use Kerrison Rongeurs. They are high-quality and designed to provide sharp bites each time, helping surgeons cut and remove small pieces of bone during surgery (hence the name, which means ‘gnawer’ in French!), offering the same high performance and reliability as a reusable instrument. They have a range of features to help surgeons perform procedures a lot easier, safer and more accurately.
All instruments in the range are made of high-grade steel ensuring smooth action and all are high quality single use devices that are supplied sterile and in individual pouches to ensure they are sharp and to eliminate the risk of cross infection. The challenges of cross-infections in surgery are also well-known worldwide, particularly in the current climate with a heightened emphasis on patient safety. Our single-use instruments help to protect against these risks and make a huge difference to sterile services. Our products ensure they don’t have to struggle to clean the device following procedures, while ensuring that devices don’t become dull.
There are a total of nine styles of Kerrison in our range, including 3 sizes for delicate use ranging from a 1mm bite (S161) through to 3mm (S262). These are 45˚, upward cutting styles, with our 90˚ cutting model (S367) for DCR’s and are also ideal for procedures where steeper angle is required to access the site. Altogether they solve a lot of challenges supporting orthopaedic spine surgeons to perform safer, more accurate procedures.
Eakin Surgical is a manufacturer of high-quality single use surgical instruments that are sold worldwide. Our solutions have been designed in response to the growing concerns over the cleaning of reusable fine lumen instruments – which are associated with high risks of patient-to-patient cross-infection.
We work closely with healthcare professionals to identify where products can be improved and bring to market innovative solutions that offer surgical teams the reliable, practical and flexible tools that they rely on – without compromising on the high quality, ease of use and functionality of the reusable equivalent, and while still delivering optimal value and safety for patients.