Steps in the Management of Surgical Instrumentation

In order for effective instrument management progress your hospital administration and surgery leadership must support the centralized approach to managing the inventory. The steps to complete such a task are not as impossible as they may seem and in most case are as easy as 1-2-3.

Step 1:

Centralize the management of surgical instruments under the leadership of one entity. Allowing the management of materials, be it supplies, equipment, or surgical instruments to be split between services, reduces one’s ability to associate them collectively to the end service, pulling cases for surgical procedures. Instrumentation is one part of the service-related function SP must have full control of, along with the authorization for the purchasing and operating budgeting of all surgery-related instrumentation.

Step 2:

Listen to the SP staff and scrub techs, as they know better then any manager what’s needed. A seasoned surgical scrub professional knows which sets are flashed daily whereas a CS tech will have knowledge as to how many instruments sets are needed to support the OR schedule. They can tell which instruments cause the most interruptions during the day as well as what is needed in your facility’s routine back-up instrument inventory.

Step 3:

One of the tools that we have available to SP but rarely ever use and in some cases not even known about is the use of equipment-conflict checking in the OR scheduling system. When used properly this somewhat simple step can solve instrument turnover problems, aid in the reduction of flash sterilization, and improve room utilization.

The SP department will need to educate itself to the OR scheduling process by sitting down with the scheduling office staff and finding out what takes place when cases are scheduled. Understanding block scheduling and room turnover will also help you improve instrument throughput.