surgical instruments until they can get cleaned," says Mark Voigt,
director of sterile processing at CentraCare Health in St. Cloud, Minn.
"If blood is allowed to dry, it can cause that pitting and rusting. It
could be so bad that you have to replace the instruments, and that's
costly."
2. Preventive maintenance program.
Make sure you're on a
good preventive maintenance program. There are a lot of repair com-
panies out there that will come to your facility and set up a program
to have routine checks — for example, sharpening blades and making
sure clamps are lined up properly — that will help instruments from
becoming damaged beyond repair.
Think about your car. If you're good to it, it'll be good to you. If you
change the oil every 3,000 miles, you could get more than 100,000
miles from the car. But it you abuse your car, you're likely to have
problems. It's the same with your instruments. Modern-day surgical
instrumentation is becoming even more complicated, especially in
robotics. And it's way more expensive to fix than it used to be.
"That's why it's imperative to make sure your equipment is working
appropriately," says Mr. Voigt.
3. Transport with care.
You can damage instruments while
transporting them. Make sure that your sterile processing department
is packaging your instruments in a way that follows the manufactur-
er's IFU. But that's not all. Make sure that instruments aren't being jos-
tled during handling, particularly in the transport cannister.
"We see even more damage to instruments from the OR on the way
to our decontamination area," says Mr. Voigt. "I don't think anybody is
trying to intentionally damage instruments, but they're being pushed to
go faster and faster to turn the room over. Sometimes it's just kicking the
9 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9