Last-minute changes to the surgical schedule, surgeon requests or cases that require specialized instrumentation could throw a wrench into how smoothly instruments flow through your facility. Installing a whiteboard in the hall...

Instrument cleaning and sterilization is a complicated process rife with potential oversights and failures, so how can you be completely certain your facility’s tools are...

Days fill up fast when you’re managing a busy surgical facility, and it’s often difficult to remember — or find the time — to get out from behind your desk to connect with staff, see how they’re doing and answer questions they have...

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

The first step to ensuring your facility’s instruments are properly cleaned and sterilized is grasping the importance of the tasks and appreciating the hardworking staff...

Approach greening your facility as a strong and steady tortoise would, rather than a hare sprinting out of the box. “Build a strong foundation,” says Kaeleigh Sheehan,...

Hardworking professionals in ORs and sterile processing departments should respect each other’s efforts, but consternation between the two groups is often more common...

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

The reprocessing of flexible endoscopes involves dozens of steps that must be performed correctly every time by staff members who follow an airtight scope handling...

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who knows more about proper instrument care than Linda Gomes. The former surgical tech used to work in the sterile processing...

Reprocessing techs at outpatient ophthalmic facilities don’t often deal with grossly contaminated instruments, so it helps to alert them when tools are in need of extra attention before sterilization. “Enzymatic detergents...

This is an article about endoscope reprocessing. You know what that entails by now. Or at least you should. Scopes are wiped down with an enzymatic cleaner at the bedside...

From meticulous bedside pre-cleaning to high-level disinfection, endoscope reprocessing is a complex process that benefits greatly from standardization. That’s no...

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Two years ago, our orthopedic surgery center launched a comprehensive total joints program. We built two ORs and added 150 instrument trays, but couldn’t expand the...

The FDA announced earlier this year it was investigating the cause of 450 infections in patients who had undergone procedures involving urological endoscopes. The cases, ...

Endoscope care guidelines generally agree that dirty scopes can sit for an hour before reprocessing begins. Any longer, and bioburden is difficult to remove. To let reprocessing techs know how long scopes...

Linda Spaulding, RN, CIC, is a fixer of sorts. When facilities are having a problem with their infection control practices, they call her in to figure out how to solve it. Based on...

Professionals in the sterile processing department (SPD) do their part to break the chain of infection by disinfecting and sterilizing the tools physicians use to provide safe...