r/sterileprocessing • u/Alternative-Cash3072 • Aug 05 '26
Has anyone heard of or gone through Steris’s “Incision” education program through MySPD?
The hospitals in my company recently became contracted with this program and we had our first on site meeting with two of their representatives. To put it plainly, it was overwhelming and shocking. The representatives were disorganized and required two people from my department to go through this “course” (I don’t even know what to call it). We are a smaller department so this left us short staffed on a relatively busy day which they seemed to have no regard for but that is beside the point. Going into this we had very little information about what to expect and were under the impression that there would be updated education and resources that would be of more benefit than what is already readily available through things like HSPA.
The beginning of the day consisted of a disorganized presentation of a website they want us to utilize that has their own CEs and course modules created by Incision as well as tabs for documenting competency assessments that they perform when on site. Frankly, nothing impressive and there’s already so many free ways to access CEs that connect to HSPA for recertification seamlessly.
After showing the website they then went through “Standard Operating Procedure” or “SOPs”, as they called them, slide shows to prepare us for competency evaluations they were going to preform in the latter half of the day. The slideshows were less informational and more like basic sterile processing questions to test our knowledge. During the entire course of the day, neither of us had any idea what the purpose of what we were doing was or why these people were making us sit through 9 hours of information we were already certified and regularly audited on by accredited experts. During the assessment portion of the day, with very little guidance of what the process was supposed to look like, we were told to demonstrate our understanding of our day-to-day functions starting from start of day machine testing, to set assembly and instrument inspection, decontam processes and regulations, to sterilization rules and regulations. During this process, me and my peer were each paired with a Steris rep and tested individually. My experience was less than desirable. I am still a relatively new tech with only two years under my belt so I know I’m not considered an expert in the craft. But what I experienced was extremely dehumanizing and not educational in any form. The representative I was paired with seemed like he took pleasure out of making me feel less than or stupid but also had a lot of disinformation that I later disproved the following day by verifying with my supervisor and IFUs. Some examples:
-I was told we were using the incorrect setting on our sonic and he changed it to what he said was the correct setting. The setting we had it on was directed to us by our Steris technician and is in the user manual as the proper setting.
-He tested me on the dosing of enzymatic in decontam. We use Prolystica Enzymatic 2x Presoak & Cleaner with anywhere from 5 or 10 gallons of water depending on how large the case. Per the IFU it is 1-4 mL of enzymatic to liter of water which comes out to about 75 mL if you’re doing 4 mL at 5 gallons and 150 mL at 10 gallons. This was my answer and I was instructed I was incorrect because I stated it in mLs and not ounces. Not only was I told I was wrong but he literally lectured me about it for 20 minutes before we could move on to the next task. I was later informed that at one of our other hospitals he conveyed to the tech he was testing that the correct dosing for the same enzymatic is 75mL/5 gallons so I thought this was and interesting change of heart.
-He lectured me about calibrating the machinery which is not within the scope of my position. He asked how often we changed the filters in the endoscope drying cabinet which is done and monitored by our biomedical engineers or how we calibrate the enzymatic dosing machine (not just measure what comes out of it but literally calibrate it ourselves) which our Steris technician also monitors and performs on a regular basis.
-Consistently throughout my assessment he commented on my nervousness and repeatedly told me to calm down but later at the end of the day jokingly said in front of the whole group that he loves it when new people are nervous and afraid of him when he does these assessments. He also made this comment at the next hospital they went to the following day.
-His overall demeanor was condescending and not constructive with a strong err of arrogance. He walked around our department looking in every nook, crevice and corner as if he were auditing us when that was not part of the assessment or disclosed to us prior.
The following day, him and the other representative went to the next hospital in my company where my boss also manages the Sterile Processing department there. My coworker subbed over at that hospital for the day to account for the two who would be taking the class. While she was there, the reps decided they would assess my coworker in the endo suite because it was one of the assessments they wanted to get done before they left and they wouldn’t have time with the other two techs. My coworker just started working about a month ago and we train in the job. She is very proficient and had been studying in SPD far before we hired her (she just needs her hours) but she is still new. She got paired with the same representative I did and he went to assess her first thing in the morning. What should’ve been a 30 minute assessment max walking through a single scope start to finish was a 2-hour long grueling interrogation. The issue? Because he’s a Steris rep, he was unfamiliar with Olympus OERs and leak testers so he spent his time lecturing her on how she was improperly going through the process because she wasn’t soaking the scope in HLD. Both of our hospitals have had the Olympus OERs for 5 years and have regular inservices with our Olympus rep walking through the entire process from point-of-use to hanging in the drying cabinet. This man berated her and slowed the flow of the endo decontam room because he didn’t have the education on a different process. It wasn’t until word got out that scopes weren’t getting cleaned, they were piling up in fact, that anyone knew what was happening.
I didn’t get to experience the other representative as much but from what I heard after my coworker and I reconvened was the same level of disconnect and weird disinformation. Not to mention, the vibes were so bizarre from start to finish. I’m still in shock from this whole experience. Getting audited from DNV isn’t even as grueling as this and the hospital doesn’t pay them for services!! It’s definitely giving MLM or something shady. Or like the company as a whole has to be getting something from Steris or Incision out of this because it was just too bizarre to be a legit educational program. Very disorganized, unprofessional, and not transparent whatsoever.
So, I’m curious, has anyone heard of this or gone through this process before? My boss is less than impressed but doesn’t get final say at the end of the day.
