Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

OR Excellence 2019 Awards - Outpatient Surgery Magazine - September 2019

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/1164414

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 23 of 144

took real-time pictures of case carts containing instruments that weren't pretreated correctly; we'd placed numbers on the carts to link them to specific procedures for easy identification. We'd present these photos to OR nurse leaders to drive home the seriousness of the laps- es. We found instruments that come apart were not apart, hinged instruments weren't in the open position, and the amount of enzymat- ic cleaner being applied was inconsistent. Trays that were opened but not actually used in the OR, like trial trays or different trays for specif- ic procedures, weren't being sprayed. Our CSP staff wasn't reporting breaches in pretreatment protocols — nobody wants to be the tattle- tale, so they just kind of overlooked pretreatment lapses and didn't report them. All of this needed to change. You might be surprised by what you find in your own facility. Collecting valuable data and anecdotal information through an audit will give you an excellent idea of how lax or strong your pretreatment compliance is in reality. Get everyone involved. As happens in many healthcare facili- ties, individual departments often get siloed. The right hand doesn't fully know or appreciate what the left hand is doing. Unfortunately, in any process, one break in the chain, one person not doing something correctly, can bring the whole thing crashing down. Even though our CSP staff was frustrated with the condition of the instruments they were receiving, they didn't report it to anyone, so our OR teams never knew. That's why it's important to examine the pretreatment problem from all angles. Don't address just your OR staff about pretreating instru- ments. Get all of your facility's stakeholders aware and involved. Different people in different departments will tell you how they see the 2 Infection Prevention IP 2 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers - OR Excellence 2019 Awards - Outpatient Surgery Magazine - September 2019