In operating rooms and sterile processing departments, patient safety has no quitting time. This explains why we are compliantly obligated to enforce and crosscheck our best practices to ensure best surgical outcomes for each patient. In sterile barrier maintenance; however, rigid containers elusively sustain wear and tear around their retention pins. These invisible holes on rigid containers could become potential bacterial ingress, which contaminate surgical instruments.
What’s worse; these microscopic defects, though common in hospitals, remain hidden and impossible to detect without the use of technology. This Surgical Tray Integrity Test; applies the wicking effect of some antiseptic fluids across clean synthetic membranes to rapidly magnify potential holes around faulty retention pins of rigid instrument containers, and thus isolate them for proper repair.
Quick and easy; this sterility maintenance test, when adopted as best practice in operating rooms and sterile processing departments, would help identify and isolate compromised rigid containers for repair. It thus proactively support the minimization of surgical site infections, even as it aids operating room nurses and scrub techs speak up and boldly take action to protect the safety of each patient, in each operating room, each time.
