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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 | M A R C H 2 0 1 6
I
s your facility resorting to immediate-use steam sterilization more
often than you'd like? If so, consider doing what we did.
Keeping up with our busy schedule was extremely challenging, so
when the instrument set currently being used in an OR would also be
needed for the next procedure, we got into the habit of flashing (using
IUSS). It seemed to be the only way to keep up. We knew our rate
was unacceptably high — citation high, in fact — but brainstorming
and weekly meetings to discuss the problem were having little impact.
Finally, we hit on a way to get it under control. First, we began to
look at the next day's surgery schedule and carefully plan ahead. And
we assigned a person from SPD to be in charge of processing and
wrapping sets we knew we'd need to turn around quickly.
We also noticed that our small sterilizers have a pre-vacuum mode
just like our large autoclaves. So we changed the parameters in our
How We Got Our Flashing Under Control
• GOOD TIMES The combination of planning ahead and changing sterilization parameters can dramatically reduce your incidence of flashing.
Danny
Dillard,
CST,
CRCST
Ideas Work
That
