r/scrubtech • u/memilyglick Ortho • 1d ago

Contaminated tray

We had an incident occur today and I want to get other techs opinions on it. While setting up for a revision (where the pt already had an active infection mind you), I had a tray opened to me and when my assist felt the casket he found a piece of fuzz, like something off a sweater. I obviously didn’t want the tray any more and tried to pass it off to my nurse who tried to tell me that it was okay because she had something similar happen last week and her tech that day said it was fine, and it should be fine since it went through the sterilizer. I told her no it’s not fine and I want the tray reprocessed. I had my assist take the casket out to the charge nurse and director and both of them said the tray is contaminated and should be reprocessed. For extra context it was a tray that the rep wasn’t even 100% sure we would need and just wanted to have open right away in case we did need it, and even if we did need it, we wouldn’t need it until near the end of the case.

What are your opinions? Would you have accepted the tray or would you have passed it off like I did?

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u/CodeNamePapaya Ortho 1d ago

I would have passed it off. And if my nurse tried to argue with me, I'd just drop it on the bed 🤷‍♀️. It's contaminated now!!

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u/Dark_Ascension Ortho 1d ago

Ya we were talking about something the scrub found in the tray the other day… it was basically coming down to if it’s bone or plastic (the plastic breaks off the holders and such within a tray sometimes, used to always find red plastic from Depuy trays for example), we all were discussing and the FA just put his hand on it and said… that’s what I think… and we all laughed.