Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/291534
9 0 O U T P AT 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 | A P R I L 2 0 1 4 give reprocessing a head start by making sure that instruments stay damp when they're sent to central sterile. Covering trays with wet sur- gical towels is a good idea, but spraying the instruments down with an enzymatic cleaner is even better. The cleaner (which is also available as a gel) not only keeps the tray's contents wet, but also prevents bioburden from eating away at them. Gross contamination just rolls right off. One thing that surgical staffers must never do, though, is wipe instruments down with or immerse them in basins of saline solution. As a compound of sodium and chloride, the solution can corrode stainless steel in 30 minutes. The worst instrument corrosion I've ever seen was on items left in a pan of saline for an hour. The pitting was already visible. Diligent decontamination Cleaning surgical instruments between 30 minutes and 1 hour after use is the best defense against marking, staining and pitting, but in a busy, multi-OR facility, that's not always possible. That's why point of use pre-cleaning is so critical: because sometimes when used instrument trays are sent down to decontamination, they have to wait in a queue. The first thing a conscientious sterile processing tech does when the tray arrives on the dirty side of the room is spray it with enzymatic cleaner, whether it needs it or not. Perhaps the OR staffer just gave it a little spritz in the interest of saving money on supplies. But you need to be heavy-handed with the spray, not like you're spritzing your hair- do. Maybe it's an expensive product, but you have to ask whether you'd rather spend money on preventive care or on replacing dam- aged instruments. Plus, you can rest assured that when the tray reach- es the head of the queue, it's still protected. Even with the enzymes at work, manual cleaning is still an essential S T E R I L E P R O C E S S I N G OSE_1404_part2_Layout 1 4/4/14 2:40 PM Page 90