Losing/Throwing away instruments

[sbnursing]

I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas or suggestions on how to prevent intruments from being accidentally thrown away. What are the consequences for this? I know we can't blame one person, but some one has to be accountable, and how do I make a person/team accountable? Any help please????

[AmandaWIRN]

Originally Posted by sbnursing

I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas or suggestions on how to prevent intruments from being accidentally thrown away. What are the consequences for this? I know we can't blame one person, but some one has to be accountable, and how do I make a person/team accountable? Any help please????

Well, if you're already marking non-disposable instruments with red tape, then there's not much more you can do, other than educating employees about where to put dirty red-taped instruments, and making sure there are enough accessible collection buckets for these instruments (if people can't find where they are supposed to put non-disposables, they will just throw them in a sharps box).

[cassioo]

One time I was so busy cleaning up when a case was going on I just threw away a whole bunch of instruments the CST had put them to the side in a disposable bucket (they were clean but not needed in the case) then after the doc scrubbed it tossed his towel on top of them and I just stacked the other disposable bucket on top of the towel and grabbed them both up and put them in the trash a few minutes later the CST asked where thos instruments went....oops I went digging.

[Marie_LPN]

At one point, where i work, things were 'disappearing' so much that two people had to sign a form on top of the case cart before decontam got it. Also, which someone cleaned up their table and tray, another set of eyes watched. A lot of people were insulted and offended by this, but i personally was sick of ordering the same crap over and over, and going over budget as a result.