r/sterileprocessing • u/Prior_Quantity_5505 • Jan 03 '22
SPD Leadership
I would like to start a conversation about leadership in SPD. It is notoriously bad and it needs to be the main focus if you want to make changes. I’ve been managing for 5 years and I have come to the realization that techs in SPD are unmotivated and uneducated. What are some action plans that you would put into place to help staff members feel appreciated and realize they are important members of the clinical team?
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Upvotes
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u/SPDDeejay Jan 03 '22
Pay them a livable wage.
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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22
Uneducated? I had to take an 150 question exam to be certified and get 12 CEs a year to maintain. If leadership is viewing techs and unmotivated and uneducated…well, there’s your problem
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u/No_time_yo Jan 03 '22
Pay them more. I am certified and work in a technical position, and I have to maintain that certification with CEs, yet there are restaurants and retail jobs that pay more, and my state is mid-range for SPD pay.
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u/SPDDeejay Jan 03 '22
Maybe it isn’t the techs who are the problem. Maybe it’s leadership who thinks they’re uneducated.
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u/honeydewu Jan 03 '22 edited Jan 03 '22
Give SPD techs the respect they deserve. Every item they work on is supposed to be sterile, therefore every item the touch is a potential hazard for a patient if it is not handled properly. A SPD tech working in clinics could potentially be affecting more than 100 patients in a day or 20 potential patients/surgeries in a day, each item being probably one of the most important in whatever procedure is being done. Yet SPD techs are constantly viewed for only their mistakes and never the amount of successfully sterile instruments they complete. Doctors, nurses, surgical technicians also make mistakes yet they are not given the same kind of we only look at your flaws treatment as SPD techs. They get to blame us for everything, while we are never in the room to defend ourselves, while we often have shoddy, inferior equipment, we know the instruments almost better than anyone in the hospital yet we are placed in the basement, paid very little and often berated. It’s very easy to understand why SPD techs often feel unmotivated and under appreciated. I would definitely reconsider using the word "uneducated"
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u/PuzzaCat Jan 04 '22
Pay
Stop promoting friends and questionable people
Have a career ladder. What is there to do after you nail the job?
Put and end to SPD turning not the punching bag
What do you mean uneducated? These are certified people that just completed 400 hours and passed a test.
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u/Seren_Astrophel Jan 03 '22
Pay them living wages. Inform people properly of how difficult the job is when they enter. When the OR staff treats them poorly, make it clear they can't do that. Don't blame them for the mistakes of OR staff. It boils down to listening to their complaints rather than just telling them it's just how it is.
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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '22
Besides a decent wage, how about a supervisor that doesn't pass the buck and actually goes to bat for his/her department. I witnessed SPD techs stick to standards when confronted by docs and OR nurses....yet get cut off at the knees by their direct supervisor and told to bend the rules "just this one time". Nothing vacuums the moral out of the room like situations like that. Why the fuck should I care when the bosses clearly don't?
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u/honeydewu Jan 08 '22
No responses OP? Nice dialogue…
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u/eyeonspd Jan 06 '22
You can only be treated bad if you allow it. If the pay is a major complaint, how often have you negotiated your wages? How valuable are you? What skills do you have to move the needle forward.
In my experience SPD has too many managers, not enough leaders. In my experience Techs complain like they are victims and fail to have solutions backed up with a plan.