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I N F E C T I O N
P R E V E N T I O N
tion on every patient's post-procedure assessment/evaluation documentation. So, for example, in this section you might see
"Manufacturer Brand #3," "Carpal Tunnel #3" and "Ortho Minor #2"
trays next to stickers verifying the loads — Load #3 (processed April
13), #2 (April 8) and #5 (April 5), respectively — of those trays.
We can have up to 12 trays open at any given time, so the circulating
nurse is the one documenting which trays are on the field and on
which patients their contents are being used. After we raised our sterilization game, I started auditing the book of tracking logs, making sure I
could open it and find out exactly where instruments were and how
often they were rotating through.
I also started asking staff to find things on the fly. Using the last case
of the day as an example, I'll ask the circulating nurse to find in the
tracking log the load an implant came from, then I'll check the patient's
chart to see that everything has been recorded correctly — or ask the
operative nurse and check against the tracking log. The idea is to verify that everyone is consistently tracking correctly.
Because of the volume of implants and instruments, often specialized, moving through our facility, a tracking process such as this is
crucial. If ever there were to be an infection (we've never had one, so
knock wood), we'd be able to pinpoint the day, load number and tray
the surgical instruments came from. This would let us follow up with
other patients whose instruments may have been in the same load or
sterilized on the same day. Other benefits: Your instruments will be
much better organized, and you'll quickly see if you need to buy more
(or retire some) as case volumes shift.
Verifying in SPD
In addition to starting the tracking and documentation process in
SPD, we want to verify that we're doing 3 other things correctly.
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J U N E 2013
