Robotics Implementation: Tips For Success From An SPD Educator

Posted on August 20, 2023January 2, 2026 by Megan Pietura

Shary Williams

Implementation of robotics programs can be problematic for sterile processing departments. The increased volume, need for additional knowledge, training requirements, and equipment can cause more than a few headaches.

We spoke with Shary Williams, Sterile Processing Quality and Education Manager at Northshore University HealthSystem to get insights on how to make a robotics implementation smooth in SPD.

Awareness

The most important factor for successful preparation in SPD ahead of a robotics program implementation is knowing that it’s happening. In many circumstances, sterile processing departments aren’t brought into the fold ahead of time, resulting in inadequate preparation and inability to properly support the new program.

Williams’ SPD Director, who had a strong relationship with the OR and was an effective communicator, made sure that each facility was in-the-know and that everyone was aware of their role in preparation.

For departments who aren’t adequately prepared for changes in workload or case volumes, mitigating the impact is the next best practical solution. Investing in back-up equipment, cross-training employees or having a general knowledge of upcoming changes and trends in instrument reprocessing can make last-minute changes less disruptive.

Training

Many technicians may be unfamiliar with robotic devices and unsure of what they are or how to properly reprocess them. “Some members of the team looked at the instruments and thought robotics would be easy!”, Williams explained.

But, as Williams continued, robotic devices are actually very complicated, and there’s a lot that a sterile processing team needs to know and understand before robotic instruments start showing up in a department.

Organizing training for your team in the weeks, and even months, before a robotics program is launched is critical to ensuring that you’re ready to go when the time comes to start supporting a robotics program.

Equipment

The preparation for a robotics program often includes the procurement of new tools and equipment to help the department reprocess robotics efficiently and in accordance with IFU. Implementing these tools, however, isn’t as simple as getting them set up in the department. Williams emphasized the need to have new tools and equipment ready one to two weeks ahead of implementation to allow technicians the time to be trained and familiarized with them.

This training shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of educators, though. Scheduling vendors to come in and conduct in-services and provide general support for new tools and equipment will enable your team to ask questions and gain a deeper understanding of how to effectively use them.

Staffing

Williams also explained that coordination between the OR and SPD was critical because staffing levels need to be increased on days when robotic surgery is planned. With extended soaking times, increased volume, and complex IFU, it’s advantageous to have more team members available to keep up, especially early on.

As a department becomes more familiar and efficient with robotic instrument reprocessing, increased staffing levels may not be as necessary.

Include the Operating Room

NorthShore’s SPD and OR teams put a tremendous emphasis on ensuring they are communicating regularly and keeping each other in the loop. A great way to get support, understanding, and collaboration from your OR counterparts? Invite them over!

As a Quality & Education Manager, Williams said that offering to include the OR team during in-services, educational events, and training helped to ensure that both teams understood the complexity of the devices and diligence required to support a robotics program.

Conclusion

Due to the team-centric, comprehensive planning of Williams and her team, the robotics program implementation went smoothly. Take a page from her playbook and remember these key factors when you’re planning to support a robotics program:

Have effective communication to ensure that you’re aware that a robotics program is coming.
1. If you struggle with a lack of communication at your facility, mitigate the impact by having back-up plans, and preparing for the unexpected.
Train your team ahead of time; don’t wait for game day to start preparing.
Get tools and equipment in early and lean on your vendor partners to prepare your team.
Ensure that you have an adequate number of staff on-hand on days when robotic surgeries are taking place.
Invite members of the OR team to attend in-services, educational opportunities, and training so that everyone’s on the same page.

Preparing for a new robotics program? Check out our Robotics Reprocessing Toolkit!

The Cost of Commitment – Injuries in SPD

Posted on August 1, 2023January 2, 2026 by Megan Pietura

Ask any sterile processing professional and they’ll tell you: there’s a lot of ways to get injured in SPD. That came into crystal clear focus in our 2023 SPD State of the Industry Report when 47% of participants reported having been injured during their time in sterile processing. This is a clear demonstration of their commitment to patient safety, even with high personal costs.

While there were some unique circumstances, many participants reported similar injuries across the country. Below is an assessment of common risks technicians are facing daily in SPD.

Punctures & Cuts

From K-wires to box cutters, there’s no shortage of ways for technicians to experience cuts or punctures, and it shows. Punctures and cuts from sharps was the leading cause of injury reported by our survey participants. Indeed, Infection Control Today notes that approximately 25% of sharps injuries occur to downstream non-users¹.

The sources of punctures and cuts were varied:

Needles
K-wires (pins)
Burr left on drills.
Drill bits
Skin hooks
Sutures
da Vinci scissors
Knives
Box cutters
Various instruments

Unfortunately, punctures and cuts come with the territory in SPD, but that doesn’t mean the risk can’t be mitigated to an extent. Thicker gloves can help avoid punctures that result in cuts. Additionally, enhanced lighting at sinks can improve visibility to help ensure technicians know what instruments they’re handling.

Communicating with the OR about effective pre-cleaning, or the state of case carts can avoid unnecessary exposure to sharps hazards not meant to be processed in SPD.

Strain

Many participants cited various forms of strain as a primary source of injury within sterile processing departments. Repetitive motion was the most common issue, sometimes leading to carpal tunnel syndrome. In some instances, surgery was necessary.

Automated flushing systems can save hands and wrists from the repetitive motion of syringe flushing. For repetitive motions that technology can’t fix, it’s important to train your team on the safest ways to perform tasks. Examples include lifting heavy objects, and providing braces and supports to prevent strain. Rotating personnel throughout the week so individuals aren’t over-exerting themselves can provide recovery time.

Overweight trays were a notable source of back and shoulder strain, with technicians noting that overweight trays caused unneeded exertion in ergonomically challenging positions, such as lifting above their head or from below their knees. Loaner and vendor trays were particularly problematic in this category.

Slip & Falls

Slipping and falling was another top source of injury in SPD, primarily in decontamination where sinks and water are omnipresent. Leaky washers, overflowing sinks, poor lighting, and bad housekeeping were all cited as reasons behind slips. One technician broke their elbow from a fall on a wet floor in decontamination!

Luckily, it’s possible to address some of the frequent cause of slips:

Mats can help technicians avoid slipping on wet floors. Anti-fatigue mats also offer ergonomic benefits for technicians who need to stand for long periods. However, remove mats that slip immediately and monitor them closely.
Overflow prevention drains in some modern decontamination sinks allow the basin to fill up to a suitable level for rinsing, soaking, and flushing, but drain excess water to prevent overfills. These drains can allow technicians to turn on the water to fill basins, without fear of flooding floors.
Additional lighting at sinks is a terrific way to improve visibility in decontamination. You can add lighting in several ways, such as hoods above the sink, or task lights on pegboards or walls. A good sink vendor can help your department add customized lighting to improve visibility and reduce hazards.

2024 SPD State of the Industry Report

Interested in learning the latest insights about some of the less common dangers technicians reported dealing with in their sterile processing departments? Download our 2024 SPD State of the Industry Report and dive into everything participants had to share!

The SPD State of the Industry Survey is an annual, free, anonymous survey asking real sterile processing professionals across the country about their experiences, backgrounds, and challenges they face in their departments. We hope by providing access to free industry research and data, instrument reprocessing professionals can better grow, develop and improve their own departments through the experience of their peers. We are grateful for all the professionals who participate each year, and the contributions to their patients and facilities: thank you for all you do!

Works Cited

^{1 https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/behind-curtain-sharps-injury-prevention-and-device-reprocessing}

Navigating the New Sterile Processing Landscape: A 2023 Industry Report Overview

Posted on August 1, 2023January 2, 2026 by Megan Pietura

In June of 2023, Pure Processing conducted our annual Sterile Processing State of the Industry Survey to get an understanding of the industry’s challenges, changing attitudes & dispositions of technicians and leadership, and the most important problems to solve.

There were many fascinating takeaways and trends the survey highlighted; here’s an overview of the hot topics and information from the full 2023 SPD State of the Industry Report.

Training & Education

Participants emphasized a need for more training & education opportunities throughout the survey. While over 70% reported that their department’s leadership considered training & education important, it was rated amongst the lowest quality elements of their department, even among options like ergonomics, culture, and leadership.

The biggest challenge? An inability to participate in training & education opportunities. Many participants explained that while there are many ways to receive training & education, departments aren’t enabling their teams to take advantage of those opportunities while on the clock.

Patient Safety

Patient safety still plays a central role in the minds of those working in sterile processing. Participants cited patient safety as a top reason they enjoy working in SPD and considered it instrumental when asked what makes a department great to work in. It’s not just leadership’s emphasis on patient safety, though; many look for an emphasis on patient safety among their peers as well, noting that doing things the right way in the name of patient safety is a must. A patient-first culture was key for overall job satisfaction.

Pay & Benefits

Pay & benefits remained a top concern in 2023. Comparing their wages against those of fast-food restaurants, participants noted that SPD has been left behind in terms of compensation. By intertwining compensation with training & education, some SPD professionals are seeking to have certifications and educational accomplishments be the basis for pay increases. A lack of compensation enhancement for obtaining certifications, such as CRCST, was identified as contributing to the number of underqualified people currently working in sterile processing departments. Technicians are feeling the lack of incentive for certification, and taking notice of its impact in very real ways.

Injuries

47% of participants reported having been injured at some point in their sterile processing career. While sticks/punctures were far and away the most common, the wide variety of injuries demonstrates just how dangerous working in SPD can be. Some unique injuries included:

Chemical exposure and burns
Respiratory damage from PPA
Shocks
Falling objects

Upcoming Challenges

Staffing & Retention is considered the most substantial challenge in the near future. Fewer people apply for positions in SPD (with many applicants being under-qualified for the work), as well as compensation challenges keeping good people from applying and/or accepting positions, is compounding the people challenges for central sterile leadership.

Other challenges that participants believe would emerge or escalate over the next year included compliance concerns, growing instrument complexity, keeping up with increased volume, antiquated technology, and robotics program expansion.

Hands-On & In-Person

Many participants voiced the need to get back to face-to-face interactions. Whether it be attending a local chapter show for education and networking opportunities, attending national shows, such as the HSPA Conference, or getting hands-on training with industry professionals on equipment within their department, people want to interact with people.

Vendors are playing a big role on this front, with over 87% of participants saying they’re looking to vendors for equipment training, educational sessions, and in-services.

2023 Sterile Processing State of the Industry Report

Interested in digging into all the information and data from in the 2023 Sterile Processing State of the Industry Report? Sign up to receive a free digital copy when it’s published!

Check out some other blog posts diving into data from the report here:

Roots of the Staffing and Retention Challenges in SPD – 2023 SPD Survey Results

Unlocking SPD Trends: A Side-by-Side Analysis of 2022 and 2023 Survey Data

How to Build Meaningful Department Scorecards

Posted on July 5, 2023January 2, 2026 by Megan Pietura

In March, our Voice of the Customer (VOC) Committee gathered to discuss a topic that can play a critical role in sterile processing departments but often gets overshadowed: Data. Gene Ricupito, Senior Project Manager, Sterile Processing at UCSF Health graciously offered his time, experience, expertise, and resources to Pure Processing to outline how to create a great departmental scorecard.

Scorecards are not a topic that commonly comes up in day-to-day conversations. For many, the term might first bring to mind the scorecard tucked in a golf cart at the start of a round. But scorecards for sterile processing departments are something else entirely.

Let’s cover some terminology/ideas before we dive in:

Scorecards are a compilation of meaningful information that help determine the health and productivity of a department.

A metric is a descriptive statistic, indicator, or figure used to describe or measure an activity or performance quantitatively.

Metrics can reported in two ways:

Directly observed
System derived (such as from a tracking system)

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measure used to determine the success of a department or activity. They can be lagging (look at results achieved), or leading (activities that lead to results).

Determining What’s Important

The first step to developing a scorecard for your department is determining which metrics and KPIs are important to you. While there is some variance, many departments will generally want to view similar information to determine the health of their department. Some beneficial information to include for daily review could include:

Case carts built
Total cases supported
Average backlog
Sets incomplete
Throughput
Loaners received
Staff present
Various equipment issues

Another consideration is building a separate tool to track daily, weekly, and monthly averages for critical metrics to analyze changes and trends over time.

Defining Your Metrics

With your metrics decided, the next step to take is adequately define them. Defining what your metrics mean and how they’re measured has several benefits:

Your team understands how to collect each metric for accurate reporting.
Each team member knows what the metrics mean and what they represent in performance.
Data collection will remain consistent over time, allowing for accurate evaluation of the metrics you’ve decided to track.

Configuration

Laying out your scorecard in a practical, easily understood way is important. This ensures that interpretation of your data is seamless and straight-forward. Breaking your scorecard into sections that allow for totaling and easy reference will allow you to quickly find information you want to review, explain to others, or further explore.

Using rows for data type and columns for dates provides a broad picture of performance over time. Customizing reports to highlight improving or declining trends on a weekly basis can help managers zero-in on where to focus and what to pay attention to.

Sharing Your Scorecard With Your Team

While many of the metrics managers will want to track provide them with insights into their departments, scorecards can also be used to motivate your team and define expectations.

Conducting a shift huddle at the beginning of every shift allows a department to:

Get a status update following the previous shift.
Identify what you need to accomplish in the coming hours.
Determine where to direct their efforts.
Allocate resources to accomplish the tasks at hand.

Further, sharing the information contained on a scorecard can help teams get a better understanding of their impact, and acknowledge when they’re doing a great job. Similar to the “X days without an injury” signs in manufacturing or production plants, sharing information about department performance in a broad, visible setting can enhance the sense of being a team and working to maintain momentum.

Conclusion

This introduction to building and configuring a scorecard for a reprocessing department is just the tip of the iceberg! As you begin using your scorecard to improve your department and gauge its health, more ideas are likely to come to you. Data has many uses and the tracking systems many sterile processing departments use have powerful reporting abilities that can give you a tremendous amount of insights into your department.

Interested in exploring other data-related blog posts? Check these out:

Where to Start and How to Gather Department Data

Optimizing Your Department With Data

About: Voice of the Customer Committee

The Voice of the Customer Committee is a panel of healthcare and instrument reprocessing professionals who have graciously donated their time to share their expertise and guidance on current challenges faced by the instrument reprocessing community. Through sharing their insights, experiences, and best practices, we have been given the opportunity to share these findings with our readership. We’d like to thank our VOC members for their outstanding input and insights, as well as their time! Thank you for your continued partnership, and all you do.

Departmental Problem Solving with Data

Posted on July 5, 2023January 2, 2026 by Megan Pietura

In March, our Voice of the Customer (VOC) Committee gathered to discuss a topic that can play a critical role in sterile processing departments but often gets overshadowed: Data. We partnered with Gene Ricupito, Senior Project Manager, Sterile Processing at UCSF Health to do a deep dive on solving problems using data.

Collecting data in your department helps you understand trends and challenges. The power of data, however, comes when you start acting on its findings and solving problems with it. What problems can managers solve using departmental data?

The Easiest Problems to Solve

Purchasing Decisions

Purchasing decisions are excellent to approach with data. One great example is packaging decisions and determining whether to purchase more containers or wrap.

Analyzing usage of containers, you can determine how quickly it will “pay” for itself. Every use reduces the cost per use based on your investment. Including this with data regarding wrap integrity concerns and number of incident reports, managers can begin forming a basis to go with one or another.

Data tracking systems can show how often trays need to be moved between facilities. Containers offer better protection during transport, so if you expect frequent movement, containers may be the best option.

By using data on usage, incident reports, and transfer frequency, sterile processing managers can determine the best packaging method to invest in.

Performance and Productivity

Tracking systems are great for delivering information on activities occurring throughout a facility and demonstrating productivity levels. Creating process points throughout a department enables managers to get visibility into elapsed times between activities, ultimately providing a “data map” of throughput in the department.

Using data from these process points, managers can begin assessing what the root cause of the issue might be. Potential causes might include:

Poor or insufficient equipment
Lack of personnel
Poorly utilized personnel
Training

After identifying the root cause of the slowdown or bottleneck, managers can experiment with ways to improve throughput.

For instance, a process point in decontamination might signal that assigning two technicians is insufficient. A manager can allocate a third more resources and review data after several shifts to determine if throughput increased. If it was, they now know that decontam needs a team of three to operate at the level the facility requires.

The Most Important Problems to Solve Using Data

Some problems must be approached in a data-driven way due to their complex nature.

Staff Justification

Managers must fine-tune their utilization of staff to meet departmental goals. However, even an optimally utilized team can only do so much. When managers determine that decontamination needs an additional sterile processing technician, they reassign someone from another part of the department. Staff allocation is a zero-sum game: if you take someone from assembly and put them in decon, assembly is now down one person.

By using data from tracking systems and scorecards, SPD managers can make a case for hiring more staff. Analyzing process points, department throughput, and output over time helps decision makers see how moving staff from one area to another can solve one problem but create another.

Objective data helps managers demonstrate that even when utilized at an optimal level, the number of people they have just isn’t enough to take care of the facility’s volume.

Equipment Justification

Capital equipment investment is a huge opportunity for any department; oftentimes a new piece of equipment can solve many problems that data is helping identify. As many SPD professionals know firsthand, getting new equipment is a rare chance, and SPD leadership often need to do a substantial amount of internal advocation to make it happen. This is where data becomes essential.

In many instances, it’s easy to “know” that your department needs something, such as a sink, table, sterilizer, or washer, but getting approval for the purchase of one is exceedingly difficult. Data can provide the numerical basis for new equipment in a few ways but boils down to one fundamental concept: throughput must match volume.

Managers can use data from their tracking systems to identify where bottlenecks are forming and slowing down throughput. They can compare it to volume growth over time and demonstrate that investment in sterile processing has not matched volume growth. If you’ve had the same equipment for 20 years and volume has grown 40% during that time, your department is not configured to meet the facility’s needs.

When To Leave Data Out of the Equation

Data and information collected from a department has a lot of uses and can help solve many problems, but there are some things that managers don’t need data to remedy.

Environment of Care

Creating an environment of care doesn’t require data, it requires thoughtfulness. Partnering with infection control and regularly walking through your department helps solve small problems before they grow and ensures your department’s safety.

Some of these include:

Looking for rust on equipment
Ensuring dust isn’t accumulating in your department
Spotting and repairing dents and holes in your walls
Conducting maintenance on equipment
Keeping up with compliance standards

Soft Skills

No amount of data will help managers when they need to manage. Interpersonal disputes between teammates require a tactful, human touch to help solve. Similarly, data can reveal low morale through lower productivity, but it cannot fix it.

Showing appreciation for your team, advocating for them internally, and demonstrating you’re there to help them serve as ways to improve team morale. Next, review the productivity metrics.

What to Watch Out For

Using data to solve problems can help a manager transform their department, but it doesn’t come without its risks.

Get An Accurate Picture

Garbage in, garbage out. If inadequate processes and controls are in place to ensure that the data being collected is good, managers might find themselves in a tight spot. Using bad data to justify actions in the department can cause a slew of problems, for instance:

Misuse of technicians
Making changes that hurt productivity
Using inaccurate data when speaking with decision makers, hurting your credibility

The accuracy of your data can be a huge asset, but inaccuracy of your data can be a huge liability.

Get the Whole Picture

Accurate data is useful, but if you can’t understand its significance or how it fits into the bigger picture, it’s meaningless. For example, if a department logs its errors but doesn’t track total tray count, you only know the number of errors, not the error rate. Similarly, measuring only cases leads to inaccurate tray counts.

Many metrics benefit from association or comparison with each other. Setting up processes and a scorecard that allows you to compare and contrast different pieces of information will give you the whole picture, and not just a sliver of it.

Conclusion

Data can be incredibly useful for a wide range of problem solving. From optimizing your department, to hiring that new employee you need, to updating your equipment to match volume and better support the needs of your facility. While a data-driven approach cannot solve all problems, it can address many important ones.

Interested in learning more about using data in your department? Check out the other posts in our Voice of the Customer blog series on data:

Studying Your Department: Where to Start and How to Gather Data

Don’t Let the Work Around Become the Workflow – Optimizing Your Department with Data

About: Voice of the Customer Committee

Visualization Challenges and How to Tackle Them

Posted on June 30, 2023December 23, 2025 by Megan Pietura

Sterile processing departments are rarely given premium placement in a hospital. Further, they are often equipped with inadequate overhead lighting to counteract the lack of natural light from windows. So much so, that industry guidelines specifically emphasize it. ANSI/AAMI ST79:2017 states:

“Ancillary lighting should be considered for areas where instruments are manually cleaned and inspected. Lighting fixtures should be selected and mounted in positions that focus the light in front of the employee so that they are not working in their own shadows.”

ANSI/AAMI ST79:2017 3.3.5.6 D

What are some challenges sterile processing departments face related to lighting, and how can those challenges be remedied? Let’s shine a light on that!

The Problem: Poor overhead lighting

Departments often rely on in-ceiling fluorescent lighting. While it has been a standard for a long time, and many professional workplaces rely on them, they are generally not adequate for sterile processing departments, where optimal visibility is necessary to not only do their work but do it safely.

The Solution: Lighted Shelving

Lighted shelving units are the ideal way to remedy overhead lighting issues. Attaching them to either sinks or prep & pack tables enables departments to give working areas adequate lighting quickly, while simultaneously providing additional storage space above the work area.

The Problem: Inspecting Blue Wrap

Technicians in prep & pack have long struggled with inspecting wrap for punctures, perforations, and holes. Many technicians will hold the wrap above their head against the overhead lighting to see if any light shines through holes or imperfections. Not only is this method unreliable, but it also poses ergonomic concerns with consistent arm raising throughout the day.

The Solution: Tabletop Lighting

High-quality workstations and prep & pack tables now offer built-in tabletop lighting. Integrated lighting in this way offers many benefits, including:

Direct contrast against the light source: the blue wrap is directly against the tabletop light, making it easier to spot imperfections in the wrap and ensuring consistent quality of inspection.
Tabletop lighting brings the light source to an ergonomically-friendly position for the technician, reducing strain and ensuring comfort throughout their shift. When coupled with height adjustable lifters, workstations with tabletop lighting can transform prep & pack for technicians.

The Problem: Underwater Visibility During Cleaning

Technicians in decontamination deal with a wide array of instruments, surgical tools, and occasionally scopes at their sinks. Staff must perform cleaning tasks underwater to reduce splashing and aerosols. Unfortunately, visibility within their sink basins is often poor, with a minimal amount of light able to penetrate the water and shadows blocking what light there might be. This can lead to avoidable punctures, as well as inadequate inspection of scopes during leak testing.

The Solution: In-basing Lighting

In-basin lighting provides a benefit other lighting cannot: shining it directly on its source of action, and from a secondary angle. By bringing lighting into the basin, technicians don’t run the risk of casting shadows over it, or otherwise blocking the limited lighting in their department. Further, in-basin lights offer high visibility of scopes during leak testing by illuminating under the surface of the water, making air bubbles easier to spot.

The Problem: Inspection of Instruments

Visual inspection of instruments in SPD is one of the first lines of defense for patients undergoing surgery. A technician spotting that dull blade before it makes it the OR can have a substantial impact. Unfortunately, workstation lighting doesn’t always offer optimal conditions for visual inspection of instruments, allowing inadequate instrumentation to make it into trays.

The Solution: Task Lights

Dedicated task lights at both sinks and prep & tables allow technicians to conduct exceptional visual inspection of the instruments coming through SPD, improving the quality of the trays the OR receives, as well as patient care. With integrated magnifiers, task lights literally take it to the next level when compared to inspecting unassisted. The best part? Task lights are able to be mounted to pegboard back walls, affording sterile processing departments all of the benefits task lights provide, without cluttering or using the limited space available in SPD.

Illuminating Opportunities

With so many areas to incorporate supplemental lighting solutions, there’s no shortage of opportunities to enhance your department, improve ergonomics, and deliver and exceptional patient experience.

Looking for input or help to improve the lighting in your department? We’d love to help you out!

Interested in learning about luminosity requirements when reprocessing and inspecting instruments, plus earning 0.5 free CE? Check out our blog post: Luminosity Requirements in Instrument Reprocessing and Inspection

Don’t Let the Work Around Become the Workflow – Optimizing Your Department with Data

Posted on June 23, 2023January 2, 2026 by Megan Pietura

Our Voice of the Customer (VOC) council convened earlier this spring to discuss a topic on the minds of many sterile processing department managers, but not necessarily at the forefront of current conversations: data.

If you missed the first VOC blog post on data, Studying Your Department: Where to Start and How to Gather Data, be sure to check it out!

Once a department has established how to consistently collect reliable data, it’s time to put it to use. A great place to start is addressing workarounds that have become standardized within a department’s workflow.

Common Workarounds That Become Commonplace

Often, departments may not even realize that a workaround to a solution has become standard practice in their department. Here are some common examples of workarounds that can become permanent if not stamped out:

Shortened soaking times – Without a timer at the sink, it can be easy for instrument soak times go too long, or not long enough, to meet IFU requirements.
Eliminated soaking times – In some cases, especially when technicians are rushed or don’t understand the importance of soaking, they may skip soaking, thinking later cleaning will be enough.
Flushing requirements not being met – IFUs that call for specific flushing requirements, such as 60 seconds, can be difficult to meet when syringe flushing, even with a timer. Because the syringe needs to be filled, attached, and emptied, ensuring flushing requirements are met can prove challenging.
Testing – Lack of tools can sometimes lead to skipping tests, such as checking insulation. If two techs share one insulation testing machine, the one not using it may skip the test to finish their tray faster or out of impatience.their tray faster, or due to impatience.
Visual Inspection – Limited availability or complexity of borescope systems can cause some departments to skip internal visual inspections.

The Consequences of Standardizing Shortcuts

Taking shortcuts in sterile processing leads to numerous negative consequences. For example:

Patient safety – Failing to follow an IFU or missing a test compromises patient safety
Damage & repair – Mishandling devices increases the likelihood of damage, leading to costly repairs and reduced availability for the OR.
Bioburden build-up – When instruments aren’t properly reprocessed according to their IFU, bioburden and excess chemicals can build up, leading to premature wear and failure, reducing the useful life of your device inventory.
Reputation – Shortcuts taken in SPD often affect the operating room, damaging its reputation.
Turnover – When dedicated CS staff see their coworkers cutting corners and working with less care then they do, it can cause resentment and distrust, and ultimately the resignation of great employees. One negative employee can ruin the experience of many.

How to Use Data to Identify Challenges

Good data can turn intuition into truth, and further into action. Good data can often identify challenges in reprocessing departments, such as:

Frequency of processing

How many times per month is a tray type being processed?

Use an overbooked Inventory report and track when trays aren’t supplied to identify areas for improving inventory or processes.

Actual data from our VOC participants:

One tray was requested 30 times in a month. The department was unable to supply it twice.
Management escalates the issue and requests an inventory increase if 10 or more instances occur where the request couldn’t be fulfilled.

Turnaround times

How often do we receive requests to expedite trays?

Expedited trays are prone to errors, meaning that they’re a good target for quality assurance (QA) audits. Seeing high volumes of expedited requests for a specific tray type lets you know where to focus your efforts in training and materials.

Use data that demonstrates consistent quick turnaround requests for specific trays to justify expanding your inventory and better meet the OR’s needs.

Inventory without history report

What portion of our inventory is outdated and no longer in use?

Using a report to assess how often every tray type has been used can help departments streamline and optimize their inventory. A tray that has been reprocessed only once a year for the last three years is likely being reprocessed solely according to department policy.

This often happens when a physician that requested the tray leaves the hospital or begins using different or newer instruments. Data associated with inventory and tray usage can help departments justify the removal of certain trays, reducing annual workload, optimizing inventory, and freeing up space for tray types the department needs more of.

Equipment Usage

How often is my critical equipment being utilized?

During one VOC member’s example, equipment usage reports indicated only one of three functioning sterilizers was ever being used. The department’s productivity was bottle-necked to 33% total sterilizer output.

Noticing this as an artificial bottleneck, the SPD manager looked into why technicians were using only one sterilizer instead of all three. The technicians explained that this sterilizer was in an optimal position for the department’s workflow and was easiest to access and use.

After making all the tools accessible at the other two sterilizers, technicians began using them more often, which alleviated the bottleneck and improved the department’s productivity significantly.

Individual Performance

How are specific team members contributing to output?

If a technician goes from 536 trays one month, down to 330 trays the next, managers can definitively identify performance has been affected. You can identify training needs or factors affecting performance outside the workplace and discuss them.

Moving forward

Now that we’ve explored how data can help identify and solve problems, it’s time to create a meaningful scorecard. Scorecards provide consistent assessment against benchmarks, turning data from noise, into indicators of health. Be on the lookout for our next blog post: “Department scorecards and metrics: What to measure and how to build meaningful scorecards”

About: Voice of the Customer Committee

Studying Your Department: Where to Start and How to Gather Data

Posted on June 16, 2023January 2, 2026 by Megan Pietura

Voice of the Customer

In March, our Voice of the Customer (VOC) Committee gathered to discuss a topic that can play a critical role in sterile processing departments but often gets overshadowed: Data.

Jhmeid Billingslea

While it’s easy to acknowledge the benefits of collecting and using data to solve problems in sterile processing, the process can be a bit daunting. Where do you start if you want to start getting insights on your department through data?

We took the conversations from our VOC call and went a step further, collaborating with longtime VOC member, Jhmeid Billingslea of Advantage Support Services, to give readers some direction on beginning to collect and use data in their sterile processing departments.

Productivity

The first step towards becoming a data-driven department is honestly assessing exactly how productive your department is. If you’re perpetually behind on cases, there won’t be any time or energy available to begin taking on new initiatives. Struggling productivity can also make it feel like a department is understaffed, further worsening a team’s perceived bandwidth. A productive department is a proactive department, so tackling issues that reduce productivity, or implementing tools that can boost it, is important for departments to consider.

Unfortunately, recognizing productivity issues can be difficult without addressing them. If your department might be under performing, take these two basic steps

Look at the total number of trays completed vs the number of people in your department.
Assess the output of your highest-performing employees against the output of your team.

Determine how many trays your team completes per shift and compare it to the number completed by your high performers. This allows you to start identifying ways to optimize task completion across the department.

Quality assurance

The next step towards becoming a data-driven department is implementing quality assurance policies to ensure what your department produces is accurate, correct, and safe to use.

Rating carts coming into your department is a critical component to begin collecting data, and the benefit is two-fold:

If every cart coming from the OR is assessed and rated by a member of your team, you now know when that cart first showed up to the department. This will help you determine how long it takes your department to fully reprocess it.
Identifying and rating carts allows your SPD to clearly identify damages and concerns with point-of-use cleaning before any reprocessing is done. Reporting poor ratings and failures to the OR manager can help improve pre-cleaning practices before SPD receives an instrument, helping to reprocess it more efficiently.

Implementing proactive quality assurance measures before storage is also a big piece of the puzzle. This approach helps you identify deficiencies in your department and reduce the number of failed trays sent to the OR.

A couple of best practices to keep in mind:

Importance of categorizing trays and tray complexity. Not all trays are equal; completing 10 basic trays may take the same amount of time as completing 3 complex ones. Gauging performance requires factoring in complexity, and planning must account for it. You gain a better understanding of how much time is spent on specific types of trays and add qualitative information to your data.
Avoid opting for simple solutions to meet quality requirements. Once you’ve identified the most complex cases that have the highest likelihood for error, increase the required QA quota for them to learn more about how to improve on them.

With your department’s productivity level understood and QA procedures in place, it’s now time to start collecting and using data in your department. What information should you collect, and what hurdles might you encounter in the process?

Get your team on board

A significant challenge related to getting good data about your department’s performance is soliciting team involvement in data collection. Many see it as an additional, unnecessary step that only makes their lives more difficult. In reality, this could not be further from the truth.

By demonstrating a few points to your team, you can get on the same page about the usefulness of data in SPD:

Insights from departmental performance can help you justify investments for more staff, new equipment, and training to help your team achieve their goals more easily.
Individual performance metrics give managers objective information they can point to when looking to give raises or promotions, offering sterile processing professionals more opportunities to grow in the industry.
Proactive quality assurance and cart ratings can help improve communication with the OR and solve problems before they ever get to SPD.

There are many more benefits, but the more objective information a manager has about their department, the better they can advocate for and improve their department.

Ease of input and data complexity

Even if your team is on board with following the procedures to gather data about your department, it may not get done. Choose metrics that are easy to collect and analyze. Even though metric A might be valuable to have, the complexity of collecting it could make it difficult to reliably obtain. However, with a little creativity, you might be able to collect metrics B and C and get the same insights you would have gotten from A.

Inputting information is another hurdle worth accounting for. Rather than making your team type information into a system, incorporate preset functions and options that can be selected with one click. Better yet, incorporating barcodes and scanners removes many barriers to tracking.

Easy and accurate is better than difficult and perfect.

Explore what your tracking system can do

Many of our VOC members indicated they’ve only tapped into the potential features of their integrated tracking systems, and that there were opportunities to improve.

Here are a few tips for getting more out of your tracking system:

Train, train, train. Most tracking solutions have training programs. Make sure that your team knows how to use your tracking system.
Become friends with the administrator of your tracking system. Every facility administers software differently, and many times the tracking software used by SPD isn’t controlled by SPD at all. If this is the case, learn who manages the software and explore what they’re able to do with it. There may be functions available to you that you are not yet aware of.
Use it. While there may be many features that aren’t enabled or configured for use, it’s important to use all of the ones available to you and understand their capabilities. Since you already own it, make the most of its capabilities.

Taking action

You’ve taken all the steps needed to start collecting data, but how long should you wait before you start taking action based on what you learn from it? The short answer: one month.

While you can wait a little longer, maybe 2-3 months, the fact of the matter is that if you start seeing opportunities to improve based on the data, it’s better for the department, the hospital, and most importantly, the patient to start improving as soon as you’re able to identify and solve the problem.

“To the SPD community: Don’t be afraid of data; data can be your best friend. It can be used to really positively impact your team and department.”

– Jhmeid Billingslea

With the tools and knowledge to start collecting data in your sterile processing department, it’s time to take the next step: using data to improve your department.

Check out the next blog in this series: Optimizing Your Department with Data

About: Voice of the Customer Committee

Supporting Surgical Robotics Programs: The Robotics Reprocessing Toolkit

Posted on May 30, 2023December 21, 2025 by Megan Pietura

From journals like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet refusing to publish information about the “seemingly incredible nature of robots assisting with surgery”¹in 1997, to the majority of minimally invasive surgeries being conducted via robotic-assisted surgery in 2020², Intuitive Surgical®’s robotic surgical platforms have been sweeping the healthcare industry in the U.S. over the last 20 years, and that growth is poised to continue at a rapid pace in the coming years.

Unfortunately, the same investments made by healthcare facilities to implement new, or additional robotic surgical volume, doesn’t often extend to sterile processing departments, causing them to take on an influx of sophisticated surgical devices without additional tools or personnel to do it.

How can the addition of appropriate tools and equipment turbo-charge a sterile processing department supporting a surgical robotics program?

Automated flushing systems

Flushing requirements of robotic instruments are one of the most laborious aspects of their reprocessing instructions for use (IFU). Not only do they contain time and volume requirements, but there are also two, sometimes three, ports that need to be flushed. Each additional port doubles, or triples, the flushing time required per device compared to single port devices, leading to lengthened reprocessing times and bottlenecks.

Automated flushing systems enable technicians to flush each port simultaneously, significantly reducing time spent flushing. Further, automated flushing systems ensure that the appropriate volume of solution is flushed per device IFUs, meaning compliance comes at a much lower cost in time spent and repetitive motion.

The most guesswork (and human error) often comes from ensuring 30psi is met during robotic lumen flushing. Automated flushing systems ensure that the 30PSI flushing requirement is met consistently for all ports; this is often impossible to meet or validate with syringes.

The benefits of automated flushing systems go beyond ergonomics, productivity, and compliance. With SP robotic devices requiring two-handed manipulation of wrists and joints while simultaneously flushing ports (seemingly impossible to do all at once), an automated flushing system can be securely connected to allow technicians to freely manipulate joints according to IFU.

As the sophistication of robotic arms increases, manual flushing is likely to become a of thing of the past in modern sterile processing departments.

Sink, basin, and soaking solutions

Two other significant concerns are the length of robotic arms and their extensive soaking requirements.

The length of robotic devices has been a concern in departments due to inadequate basin size of many older sinks currently in use. Narrow basins lead to an inability to fully submerge the device, causing compliance concerns as well practical cleaning issues.

Soaking requirements also create problems in sterile processing departments that haven’t received the budget to prepare for reprocessing robotics. With long soak times, robotics tie-up sink basins and slow down throughput at the sink.

Transporting robotic instruments can be challenging, but transport containers, such as the InstruSafe XL Transport Container, solves transportation and soaking concerns. An ideal size for soaking and protecting your valuable instruments, it offers a standalone soaking basin solution for larger instruments, with a lockable, dry-erase lid to note the start time. Additionally, it’s cart washer safe and includes water volume indications and bio-hazard labels for a complete soaking system.

Limitations associated with space plague many departments, making the implementation of new, fixed equipment challenging. Mobile solutions bring the benefits of an additional basin capable of fitting a robotic device without giving it a permanent location in the department. With casters, a pegboard to mount tools, and a small footprint, the PureSteel™ Mobile Soaking Station is streamlined for robotics reprocessing in a package that can be deployed and removed from the department as needed, saving precious space without forfeiting capabilities.

While a sterile processing department may not receive a sink upgrade with the implementation of a robotics program, smaller and more targeted solutions can help tremendously. Small, dedicated sinks, such the PureSteel™ XI Reprocessing Sink, can kill two birds with one stone:

The 28” sink basin comfortably submerges da Vinci robotic arms
A dedicated standalone sink doesn’t bog down other reprocessing sinks from their workflows

With the addition of a pegboard to organize automated flushing systems, a dosing pump and soaking timer, PureSteel™ Xi Reprocessing Sinks can get a department back to the productivity levels required while fully supporting their facility’s robotics program, at a small cost relative to that program.

Robotic surgery is an exciting, innovative part of the modern surgical landscape and is likely to continue expanding and evolving. It’s vital that sterile processing’s tools, equipment, and capabilities evolve alongside it.

Need to get your department prepared for a robotics program implementation? We’d love to help!

Works Cited

¹^{https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6261744/}

²^{https://www.generalsurgerynews.com/Opinion/Article/09-21/The-History-of-Robotic-Assisted-Surgery/64651}

FlexiPump™ Independent Flushing System

Awareness

Training

Equipment

Staffing

Include the Operating Room

Conclusion

Punctures & Cuts

Strain

Slip & Falls

2024 SPD State of the Industry Report

Training & Education

Patient Safety

Pay & Benefits

Injuries

Upcoming Challenges

Hands-On & In-Person

2023 Sterile Processing State of the Industry Report

Determining What’s Important

Defining Your Metrics

Configuration

Sharing Your Scorecard With Your Team

Conclusion

The Easiest Problems to Solve

The Most Important Problems to Solve Using Data

When To Leave Data Out of the Equation

What to Watch Out For

Conclusion

The Problem: Poor overhead lighting

The Solution: Lighted Shelving

The Problem: Inspecting Blue Wrap

The Solution: Tabletop Lighting

The Problem: Underwater Visibility During Cleaning

The Solution: In-basing Lighting

The Problem: Inspection of Instruments

The Solution: Task Lights

Illuminating Opportunities

Common Workarounds That Become Commonplace

The Consequences of Standardizing Shortcuts

How to Use Data to Identify Challenges

Moving forward

Voice of the Customer

Productivity

Quality assurance

Get your team on board

Ease of input and data complexity

Explore what your tracking system can do

Taking action

Automated flushing systems

Sink, basin, and soaking solutions

Works Cited