Throughout the course of a day, certain instruments require special attention or need to be fast-tracked through the reprocessing cycle and returned to the ORs as soon as possible. Attaching a green plastic placard...

My hospital’s sterile processing department is responsible for turning around 1,500 instrument trays a day. Our surgeons specialize in a variety of orthopedic procedures, including total joints and spine, so our reprocessing techs...

Endoscopic sinus surgery requires surgeons to maneuver mere millimeters from critical structures. They operate near the orbital lamina papyracea, and sometimes inside the orbit itself, and often use image guidance to help them move...

The technologies and solutions both available and in development for techs in today's sterile processing departments (SPDs) are becoming smarter, faster and more advanced...

Best practices in the high-level disinfection of flexible endoscopes must be prioritized after every one of the estimated 15 million colonoscopies performed each year in the U.S.,...

The proper cleaning and sterilization of microsurgical instruments is an essential part of safe patient care, but its importance can be overlooked by busy surgeons...

You cannot run a successful surgery center if your surgical instruments are dull, damaged or in desperate need of replacement. I work at an extremely busy orthopedic ASC with eight operating rooms that are full...

The attention to detail that’s required to properly care for the tools of surgery takes on even greater importance when microsurgical instrumentation is involved. Proper care and regular maintenance extend...

No sterile processing department (SPD) manager wants to add another step to the complex and strategically redundant process of sterilizing surgical instruments....

There are between 75 and 100 intricate steps involved in the proper reprocessing of flexible endoscopes. That means there are countless opportunities for staff to miss critical steps...

Zero is always the goal. Our surgery center works tirelessly on multiple fronts to ensure no patient walks away from an elective procedure with a surgical site infection (SSI). Of course, hitting that elusive benchmark is always...

Concerns from surgeons and nurses about the quality of our instruments forced us to determine the root cause of the issue. First, we had to find out if it was related to...

Sterile processing departments (SPDs) might not have the ability to dematerialize bioburden with a sci-fi-like laser beam, but the technologies and solutions available to today’s reprocessing techs are becoming smarter,...

Looking for a fun way to spice up your next staff meeting or in-service? Gather 10 to 20 needle holders that have at least one thing wrong with them — a cracked box lock, chipped insert, loose ratchet — and throw in a couple...

Efforts to keep your GI center running on all cylinders should focus on one all-encompassing goal: optimizing efficiencies. That’s according to gastroenterologist...

It’s been a little over a year since Penn Medicine in Philadelphia opened its Interventional Support Center (ISC), one of the largest instrument reprocessing facilities...

St. Cloud (Minn.) Surgery Center underwent a recent renovation to accommodate a steady increase in demand for outpatient arthroplasties. The center expanded...

The patient underwent a revision decompression with a two-level front-back fusion first thing in the morning and was up and moving about by evening. “That was definitely...

In 2021, St. Cloud (Minn.) Surgical Center performed nearly 1,000 total joint cases, nearly double the almost 400 procedures it did in 2020. This growth would’ve been...

There’s a lot to juggle at a busy health system with nine operating rooms in which an average of 50 surgical cases are performed each day. When it came to my attention...