SCOPED OUT Our flip sign ensures that dirty endoscopes leave the room before patients enter.

Clean Starts
Protect Patients from Accidental Exposure

Since dirty endoscopes should be pre-cleaned at the point of use as part of the room turnover process, we want to make sure we never accidentally bring a new patient into an endoscopy room before our techs have had a chance to come in and pre-clean the dirty scope from the previous case, transport it back to the reprocessing area and perform between-patient cleaning. The solution? We put pre-timeout flip signs on every endoscopy room door. Until the endoscope is actually removed from the room and the room is clean, the indicator on the door says "dirty." When the tech removes the scope and the room is cleaned, the sign gets flipped over to "clean." It's an extra check in the process that works really well.

Frank J. Chapman, MBA
Ohio Gastroenterology Group
Columbus, Ohio
[email protected]