Do I need to run BI's every day?

[Guest]

Our OR is not staffed routinely on the weekends. Cases are performed on an emergent basis w/ staff being "on call". Do I have to run BI's on the weekend in my gravity sterilizers (not knowing if they may be used)? This would necessitate scheduling a sterile processing individual to come in for approx. one hour on Sat. and Sun.

[Guest]

Our O.R. is staffed the same way on weekends. Surgery staff are on-call (2 Scrubs, 1 Circulator) and surgeries are to be of the emergency classification. However there are many that are not emergencies.

Our policy is that the BI's have to be done on weekends regardless of whether there are any surgeries or not. There typically would be no way for sterile processing staff to know for sure without coming in if there had been any cases. We are not routinely called in unless needed, and even then we are forgotten. There are occasions when surgery has done a few cases without calling us and let the case carts pile up. Needless to say this makes a mess of a day for us when they do this.

So each weekend, one of the four of us in sterile processing is on call and must come in Saturday and Sunday to at least run a dart and biologicals on the flashers. So if there aren't any surgeries at all, then we are here for a minimum of one hour each day.

So needless to say if the weekend is busy, it makes for a long stretch of days. We have to work Monday-Friday, then the weekend, and then another Monday-Friday before we get time off. The paycheck comes out pretty good as our weekend is overtime for us.

We also are not responsible for the regular steam sterilizers in our area. At our facility our department is only responsible for surgery instruments and sterilizers only. Central Supply deals with the rest of the house and takes care of the sterilizers that we share with them downstairs in CS/SPD. So we have two separate departments, a central supply (supplies/instruments for everywhere but surgery) and sterile processing (handles surgery instruments & labor departments c-section trays).

This of course is our policy. It would be nice not to have to come in until surgery staff do, at which point we could run the tests while waiting for instruments.

Hope this gives you some information to work with.

[Guest]

Its a matter of communication with the OR people that you work with
there should be a policy / or procedure for you to be on the on call list with the OR staff. Your CS people could come up and run test on autoclaves on weekends

[pcuddy]

We have a similar situation in our facility on weekends. I am curious to know what knd of BI you are using that you only have to come in for 1 hour? When is the BI read?

[Guest]

According to AAMI standards you should test with 3 consecutive biologicals after a major repair. What is considered a "major repair" and where can I find it in the guidlines?

[ronrunyon]

Dependant upon your facility and 'usage' of your sterilizers there are areas that run BI's only weekly (and with any implant etc.)

Coming in on a weekend to run a daily test where in most cases you aren't even expecting usage seems redundant. Which I'm sure is why every day is only a "recommendation" not a mandate. The logic to use was that if you have high volume/thru-put 24hrs round the clock on your sterilizers then one would look towards a daily testing. Alternately, if you have low usage-volumes then weekly may be the way to go. If you test a sterilizer today only to have it sit and not operated again until the next test the next day then you're not accomplishing a great deal by that test. You're only spending money. I've been in hosptials where they did one or the other ... I'm more inclinded to believe in EVERY run v.s. once a day ... no two runs are alike, you really only EVER learn from a BI that THAT particular run checked out.. it says nothing about the loads that follow. It simply points that you parameters are accurate and in place -- most of our equipment detect that internally and default if not reached. Whatever happened to the big buzz on "parametric release"?? A few years ago 'they' said it was coming :)

[jluten]

We run the small OR sterilizers daily, no matter what simply because we never know if they will be used. In CS we only run one sterilizer unless we need more. We run 24/7 since we take care of the whole house and rarely have a weekend when no surgeries are going on, emergency or not.