formed manually or mechanically, depending on your center's
resources and equipment.
It's imperative to use separate carts and containers for dirty scopes
and clean scopes, each of which should be easily distinguishable from
the other using clearly marked visual cues. Clean scopes also should
be marked as such, so dirty scopes are never accidentally mistaken
for clean.
4. Handoff.
So your staffer has navigated the obstacle course with
the cart and has reached the decontamination room. It's not enough
to just drop it off there, however. Remember that 1-hour rule? Unless
there's a really good handoff protocol from the point-of-use transport
person to the decontamination person, the latter may not know when
the scope was with-
drawn from the
patient.
"This communica-
tion is an area every
facility can improve
upon," says Dr. Kyle.
"No one's doing this
as well as it should be
done, and in a fast-
paced medical set-
ting, it's really easy to
lose track of time."
You need a protocol
that's standardized
and makes this vital
communication very
1 1 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A P R I L 2 0 1 9
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family of products provides HEPA-filtered air
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