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the next procedure. The facilitator goes immediately to the holding area
to interview, check-in and transport the next patient to the OR," says
Sandi Witcher, RN, BSN, MPA, director of the Plaza Surgery Center in
Santa Maria, Calif.
• Next Case, Please! "Our team starts wiping down non-used
items as the patient leaves the room. The scrub leaves with the instruments and we attack the room. One person wipes all equipment while
one wet-mops the floor. While they are cleaning, the tech comes back
with new linen and makes the OR table. Bring in the next case," says
Steve Harp, materials manager at Cedar Park (Texas) Surgery Center.
• Hand Me a Mop! "The circulators gather the trash, linen and
suctions, and have them bagged when the OR assistants enter the room.
Once the patient is out of the room, the surgical techs and the ORAs
wipe down the tables and equipment. All that's left to do is mop," says
Myron E. Lawson, lead operating room assistant at Carolinas Medical
Center-NorthEast in Concord, N.C.
• Two-Tech Two-Step. "We have 2 techs on our busy cataract
days. At the end of the case, tech No. 2 cleans up, gets the next case's
supplies and opens them while tech No. 1 takes the used trays to sterile processing, then scrubs and goes back into the OR to start setting
up. We literally have a 5-minute turnaround time, which includes the
CaviWipe contact time of 3 minutes. We have 6 trays, so we have time
to reprocess trays using 2 autoclaves," says Emily Duncan, RN, BS,
CASC, CNOR, executive director of the Griffin Road Campus of
Lakeland (Fla.) Surgical & Diagnostic Center. A note on kill times: You
might consider switching to a disinfectant with a 1-minute kill time.
"This saves at least 2 minutes of waiting for it to dry," says Mike
Pankey, ADN, BA, MBA, administrator of the ASC of Spartanburg
(S.C.).
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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 | N O V E M B E R 2013
