Jose Medical Center Ambulatory Surgery Unit in San Jose, Calif.
Repurpose those orange mats you use to designate a neutral zone
for the hands-free transfer of sharps to create a sterile processing
safe zone. Once the case is over, place knife handles, hooks, drill
bits and all other sharps atop the orange mat so that your SPD
team knows right away there are sharps in the tray.
3. More than half of incidents are not even reported.
It
has been estimated about half of sharps injuries go unreported.
Do your staff members feel comfortable reporting a stick without
fear of retaliation? And do they take sticks seriously?
"We don't treat it with caution and care. If I get poked, I get
poked. We don't want to write an incident report today. High
reliability is a fierce
underlying problem,"
says Ms. Crnkovich.
"No one should be
afraid to report they
got stuck."
4. Even when
you're careful,
you can get
stuck.
Ms.
Crnkovich last got
stuck almost 5 years
ago when she
reached down into a
mesh instrument pan
to grab an instrument
5 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 • J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 0
viscotcs@viscot.com • www.viscot.com • 800.221.0658
Neutral Zone
®
Contact us for turnkey implementation kit
Autoclavable
can be re-used for hundreds of procedures
Meets all hands free passing recommendations
from OSHA, AORN & CDC
