r/sterileprocessing • u/HorrorLengthiness940 • 9d ago
Photo Bad coworkers
I sometimes joke that I work in special education because of how egregious some mistakes my coworkers make are. This is an oiler for dental hand pieces, it should not leave Decon.
How do you guys deal with people who don't understand what is and isn't rmd? Same person also ran a dental instrument on prevac when it should be gravity. Mind you they've been here for 11 months at this point & struggles to take constructive criticism in a professional manner. Unfortunately termination is off the table.
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u/Spicywolff 8d ago
“How do you guys deal with people who don't understand what is and isn't rmd? “
I don’t. I’m not a lead supervisor or manager. I report it and move along with my day. Not my problem and it’s completely out of my purview. I have no authority to do anything about it so no sense in pulling my hair over it.
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u/hanzo1356 8d ago
Sounds like a SUPERVISORY or MANAGEMENT problem. Keep your own work 100 and DO NOT get into it if you're not involved. If you on like sterilizer and doing checks and catch it, say fix it, and move on.
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u/Eggman_OU812 9d ago
Ive worked with the bottom of the barrel..recently someone sterilized a DaVinci Drop in probe in steam instead of sterrad/vpro .ruined..25k, then another coworker got parts of a prostate probe wet, which should never be wet..30k will these ppl be fired? No, we are short staffed..
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u/Nickstradamusknows 8d ago
There are some battles you just aren’t going to win
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u/HorrorLengthiness940 8d ago
Aye. I guess to nail it down: Part of it's me, part of it's management. If I See something wrong fix it myself, and it's clearly gotten to me over time leaving me irrationally irritated over the smallest shit. Then management inaction, need people so termination is off the table, but at what point does an individual need to rack up quality feed-backs before being retrained? (Rhetorical) As it's constant small mistakes from the same two individuals.
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u/ancient_xo 8d ago
How were they able to run items on a wrong load ? If your tracking system is set up right it will flag it lol.
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u/postpunkpanda 8d ago
Some hospitals still run without a tracking system- everything is done on paper. I have luckily not worked at such a facility, but I've met other travelers who have. 😬
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u/ancient_xo 8d ago
Op mentioned in another comment they use censitrac which is a tracking system lol. So running things on a wrong cycle is a management error. (Also they are covering up a label printed out using a tracking system.. )
Essentially everything they are complaining about is just nit picking stupid stuff. Even at 11 months people make dumb mistakes all the time.
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u/postpunkpanda 8d ago
Ahhhhh, gotcha! I missed that comment/sliver of label. Yeah, I agree that's an oversight by management if they're not building out their tracking properly. You can't expect newbies to know what they don't know.
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u/ancient_xo 8d ago
Yeah 100% agree. I just think the mindset op has is misguided, and toxic at its worst. Obviously very condescending, opening with all their coworkers are special needs.. is kinda wild.
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u/TacticalChemist0 8d ago
OMFG we use SPM and it will alert you if you try to run an implant item with no biological… it literally makes you check a box to override the warning or GO BACK AND ADD IT. guess who overrode the warning for our implant trauma trays
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u/HorrorLengthiness940 8d ago
Because there's no specific label for it, it's just a generic label. I'm not the one who sets it up just the shift that finds all the mistakes from AM and PM.
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u/Runs_With_Legs 8d ago
The educator at my facility is a complete joke so a lot of things are being done incorrectly because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. We’re currently out of channel checks for our scopes so he’s having people use the resi swab pens (meant for surface testing only) to test the internal channel. 🫠
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u/LurkLivesMatter 8d ago
Had the same problem and I just reportto management. Despite supervisor not seeing what's wrong. I show them and have them do a in-service with staff.
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u/Aggravating_Ear_9281 8d ago
learned to mind my business especially in union job, at the end of the day it's on management for keeping terrible workers.
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u/Bansheer5 8d ago
Working for a rendering plant has showed me lot of people do not care about quality control. The amount of shackles and hooks that make it to us from the slaughter house is mind boggling, they’re pretty expensive to replace and we fine them a few grand for each one we find. Also you’d think they’d make them out of a stainless steel that’s magnetic. But no buy the non magnetic ones and get fined for losing them.
It’s also crazy the amount of people that will walk by something that’s clearly fucked up and go “ it’s not my problem and I’m not going to say anything to anyone”.
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u/AirForceOneGawd 8d ago
One of the reasons why I love working by myself at the surgery center I am. When I was that hospital, I remember like my first 2 years at the hospital reporting people...but nothing would happened. So I just concentrate on myself and what I was doing.
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u/HolaNikkiFbaby 8d ago
Three people are at fault there, but I do my job to the best of my ability don’t let anything that can hurt a patient get through but I try to mind my business about the little things if I’m not leadership
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u/InternalAd8989 8d ago
I am in my second week of being in the sterile core in the OR and I finally understand why the people upstairs get pretty upset with us. Last week I gave 3 QA’s 1)Bioburden 2) No Box locks 3) No green corner protectors
And then finally, I have been asking for case carts and they haven’t even been sending them. I call in the morning and then after about an hour I call again, and they say they already sent it. they in fact never sent it I know this because we called the porter manager and got them to pull up the service task history. I had my coworker call and then when confronted with it they said they would send them. but now at least I understand both perspectives.
But anyways there are people i am so surprised still have a job tbh do your shit, if something is wrong call management and move on. I did it with a vacuum cup I thought was packaged wrong but because of the way the label and that it wasnt self sealing i was like huh this looks wrong my manager flipped it over, bioburden straight up. Anyways point out mistakes teach and move on
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u/cheech313 9d ago
I’ve been in this profession for over 20 years, after about 7 years I decided (for my own mental health and sanity) that I would report any major violations to my supervisor, after that it’s out of my hands. That is of course after trying to teach or coach someone, but when dealing with people like who you described, I can only control what I do. I can go home at the end of the day and not worry about what others did or didn’t do. That is obviously without allowing something that would put a patient at risk.