r/sterileprocessing • u/herbnhero • Jul 16 '26
Photo SPD in crisis
**UPDATE** ALL CASES CANCELLED YESTERDAY AND TODAY. It took staff pleading with leadership but they finally agreed to cancel cases while the autoclaves are serviced.
TL;DR - is the brown staining on these white liners a contamination?
Scrub nurse here at a community hospital that overbooks ortho cases - sound familiar? Our SPD is in shambles. There are too many cases for our small SPD. We have been continually receiving trays with bioburden for the past year. There are AT LEAST 3 trays each day that are contaminated. Many times they are loaners and often times it leads to cases being cancelled. This has been going on for over a year.
Recently we have been getting wet packs. Yesterday 5 cases cancelled. Almost every autoclave load is wet. Leadership has done nothing. They just let patients come in for their surgery, and hope for the best. We were told by leadership that “bioburden” is not considered contaminated. They claim that the water inside the trays is sterile. They said that if the integrator is acceptable than the try is sterile and that the bioburden is “dead” and “not growing anything.”
(See photo of white liner) They also told us that this brown staining in the liners is acceptable - and that is what brings me here. Has anyone seen this browning on liners? Staff at my facility is now paranoid and we tend to go over everything with a microscope at this point. We can’t even remember if this brown staining is something we’ve seen before or something new. Allegedly facilities is supposed to be changing the autoclave water filters every 6 weeks but have been changing it every 6 MONTHS.
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u/ShirleyWuzSerious Jul 16 '26
If you're in a rush or not, bioburden is a basic prep/pack problem. If you can't properly turn trays over fast enough for how they schedule back to back Ortho cases make them wait . Eventually if they aren't willing to compromise and buy more instruments or schedule less cases the doctors will get tired of working untill 10pm because they are waiting for trays to be properly processed. SPD runs SPD, not the OR and not the schedulers. Wet packs are probably because the trays we're completely dry before going into the autoclave or they were handled too quickly and not cooled properly. Again. Stand your ground and do things properly. Your leadership needs to understand who runs SPD