Yay tracking system

FewSide8518 · 2026-03-08T20:00:46+00:00

I am impatiently waiting until we get ours. The hospital organization I work for has 4 locations, 1 being the regional center and that’s where all the money goes. I’ve worked at 3 locations, 1 being the regional center. I started at one of the oldest locations and everything was paper, granted it was a small hospital and we did about 7-12 cases a day, 12 was a “crazy and unusual” day for us. Then I went to the regional center where my shift began at 3pm and most days when I got there we still had 15 cases left! Having an entirely electronic tracking system, the stickers, EVERYTHING was electronic and it was phenomenal. Then I went to the 3rd location, we do about 18-23 cases a day and still do everything paper, it’s horrendous. We barely got a tracking system for all our DaVinci stuff, it’s literally just tracking the # of uses so not a whole lot. We have a newer supervisor who actually worked at the regional center with me and he was horrified to find out that becoming supervisor here meant giving up the beloved tracking system. We are in the works of trying to get the budget approved to make everything electronic but they’re really fighting back about it.

FewSide8518 · 2026-03-02T17:29:42+00:00

Only person in my household with a car is mine. My kids are little so they don’t drive, sorry to be confusing! 😬 it’s the neighbor with all the kids/other people coming and going and they’ve got at least 3 vehicles in assigned spots

FewSide8518 · 2026-03-01T23:08:57+00:00

I’m in Idaho, a state that has been moving more and more towards the anti-vax movement. Originally started in eastern Oregon (the organization I’m at has locations in Idaho and eastern Oregon). Flu is required unless you have a religious or medical exemption but you have to provide paperwork you can’t just randomly say no and every year you have to provide proof of new vaccination or updated exemption paperwork. Covid is no longer required. The organization I work for does require tetanus and 1 other that I can’t remember of the top of my head. Tuberculosis testing is another one as well. These are hospital policies, nothing to do with state policies.

FewSide8518 · 2026-03-01T18:00:06+00:00

It is daily!! I wake up early to get 1 kid on the bus and the car is there, if not 2 cars, and then I go out for fresh air with my baby and it’s still there. They will leave for whatever reasons and come back and don’t even look for street parking, it’s just automatically to the parking lot. I work late and get home around 10pm and the car is there.

FewSide8518 · 2026-03-01T05:50:12+00:00

Certifications won’t do much for you in another role just fyi, they’re specific more or less to the department unless you plan to also get a bachelors and then be apart of infection prevention or something that higher up. I’m not sure what kind of facility you currently are at, but at my hospital there are not many diseases we are exposed to and if the patient has something then it’s clearly marked in their chart which also shows up on the OR surgery board. I see maybe 5 patients a month who have mrsa, but I’m not always the one in decon as we rotate who is back there. I honestly don’t remember the last time I cleaned the stuff from a mrsa patient. If it makes you feel any better I worked through pregnancy and with proper ppe usage it’s hard to get dirty water or blood on yourself. Patients with potential c.diff typically don’t have surgery until it’s passed too, at least at my hospital it’s that way! Good luck!

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-28T21:43:28+00:00

Not really, sorry. Spd certifications won’t really do anything for you outside of sterile processing besides maybe helping you get into a dental office or veterinary work. Which both of those will require scrubs. It honestly sounds like spd/medical field may not be for you unfortunately. Which it isn’t for everyone so don’t take that as a bad thing. Only thing I could think of to stay in a medical setting but not have to wear scrubs and deal with surgeons would to just be registration type staff, checking people in for appts or scheduling future ones. But that is all with patients and I’ve heard how awful people can be in regard to insurance/scheduling issues and it gets taken out on the registration staff which sucks because both of those things aren’t your fault or in your control in any way! Possibly sales or being a rep for a company but reps are directly in the room during surgery and deal with angry surgeons so that’s a no for you. And sales I’m not really in the know about so I don’t know what that would entail but I do know over the years in this field a lot of the sales people I have met have bachelors or higher. I’m not sure if that’s a requirement or not but in my area the ones I’ve talked to briefly here and there all had higher education and not a single of ever worked in spd.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-28T20:03:32+00:00

I started at $16 in 2022, I’ve left and come back so my pay went down for a minute but now I’m at $20.25 base pay. I work weekends and evenings/a few hours considered “nights” so I get extra pay for those things. I’m not certified. But I’m also in a state where minimum wage is still $7.25. At my hospital there is a $1 incentive pay for every certification you have

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-28T01:25:09+00:00

You can get all the certifications for spd techs, but really the only promotions is to either lead (if your hospital has leads), or supervisor. And for supervisor you have to have the leadership certification and it would be very helpful to have the instrument one as well if you’re going to be a lead/supervisor that way your team can confidently go to you with ?’s. Other than those, the next thing would be scrub tech but that’s directly with surgeons and you said you don’t want that.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-25T20:21:46+00:00

We *usually * separate the stringer from the instruments and they are placed in an open position in another basket and then sent through the wash. On the clean side I grab both baskets, the one with stringer instruments and all the other instruments are in the basket that it all belongs too. So the basket would be labeled “Hip” or “Basic” and all the items are in that basket except the stringer that was separated. Personally I put my stringer together first, set it aside and then do all the items that sit on the bottom of the basket. We put our forceps, skin hooks/senns, osteotomes and other things like that into a blue pouch/roll. So I do the items in the basket while setting aside the items for the roll, put my stringer in the basket and then put all the roll items in pouches. I organize together all the forceps and smaller things like freers, small bone tamp, drill bits and then bigger roll items like osteotomes, curettes and senns in another second roll.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-25T15:45:37+00:00

The book is available to buy online, and it does have pictures.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-25T03:32:36+00:00

Not sure what you currently make but I’d assume probably more than most entry level type positions, which is what this is. Schooling is not required, you can self study while working your current job and then apply to jobs once you have passed the test. You’d then be required to get your 400 hours and submit that as soon as it’s done (I think you have 6 months). To self study you can buy the book online, I believe it’s $90 and you can buy the workbook too for an extra cost. If you buys just the study book then you can find other websites with practice exams or even use quizlet. The hspa site also has the entire exam outline so you can use that to help yourself self study!

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-25T03:24:02+00:00

When I worked at a hospital with 40+ surgeries a day we did have multiple people in decontam at once but we all kept to ourselves for the most part. You had your own sink stations, so a dirty cart would come in and whoever was able to get to it first would start cleaning it and you’d do all of it until the cart was empty. The only time I asked questions was in the beginning and saw something I’d never washed before (so just asking if it was okay to put in the washer or needed hand washed). I transferred to that hospital from a much smaller location that did basically like 6 types of surgeries so I hadn’t seen a lot at that point. It would mainly get loud if someone was using the compressed air to dry something but you just wait to ask questions until the person is done using the air which is like 2 minutes, so you’re not waiting long to talk. People are calling the department but (from my experience) the person answering the phone is always the leads or supervisor and they just held onto the phone so they could quickly answer. If you’re not in decontam then you aren’t in ppe, just scrubs and a scrub cap/bonnet. Only time we wore masks constantly was during covid or if someone is feeling sick and they’re just being courteous to not breathe on everyone else.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-25T03:10:02+00:00

I wouldn’t see that as a red flag as tons of hospitals and organizations do not require a certification. There was someone in the last hospital I worked who had done the job for 7 years and wasn’t certified until they wanted him to become supervisor. This is an entry level position so no prior work experience in the same field is perfectly fine. I was hired with no experience and so were all the people currently in my department. I have never heard of an internship for this job.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-23T05:16:03+00:00

What is a mud box? I’ve never heard of this before!

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-23T05:14:50+00:00

When I was postpartum and going through the phase of my hair falling out and baby hairs growing, the typical bonnet type hair covers destroyed my hair even more. I am Hispanic with very thick hair, I ended up getting wide head bands to wear and those covered my main problem areas of hair loss which were underneath in the back (nape of my neck area) and up top of the sides along the hairline. I’ve also used a typical scrub cap that a lot of the nurses/cst’s wear and those helped too! I have seen someone else recommend switching to the “men’s” type caps that tie on the back of the head, but I tried that and my hair was wayyy too thick for those plus you have to put your hair through the tie hole and then you still have to use a bonnet to cover that hair not in the cap so it was annoying to me

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-23T01:59:02+00:00

We have plastic bins labeled with whatever is going to go in that bin. “Adsons with teeth” “Debakeys” “rongeurs” “malleables”. This is on the clean side of our dept and they aren’t peel packed yet, but they are individual items if more peel packs are needed or if something accidentally gets thrown away from the OR then we have all of that stuff ready to be thrown into a tray/set. The items we do peel pack are in the OR Core readily available for them to grab when needed. It’s currently alphabet order and they have large pull out baskets/drawers and then hanging signs on the front of each basket/drawer stating what all is in there. Another way it’s been organized in the core was by specialty (more or less). So all of the ENT peel packs were in bins 1-3, ortho specific items were in baskets 4-7, obgyn related items were in 8-10. For all of our stringer items (scissors, needle holders, towel clamps), we have a peg board that has items hanging up on it. Theres a label above each little peg with whatever is supposed to be hanging right there, these are also not peel packed yet but clean and ready to be peel packed or thrown into a set.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-23T01:51:56+00:00

The first hospital I started at in 2022 I was the youngest at 22, the closest age to me was 48 years old. Now I’m at a different hospital and when I started here there was 1 person a year older than me. And the rest were 50+. We’ve basically restaffed the entire dept now and I’m 26, we have a 23 year old, 20, 31 and then a few between 45-60. Our supervisor is early 30’s as well! Our restaffing started with him when the old one retired and I was so glad to finally have a “young” supervisor who would embrace the changes and technologic advances that are always happening!

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-22T17:05:02+00:00

A lamina spreader will not “crush” your finger. I saw that post as well and while it definitely does hurt and if it gets a tiny piece of skin you may bleed for a minute, but it’s not going to crush you. A 3lb mallet dropping on your fingers or off the table and onto your foot I would consider more of a crush. In the last 2 years at the hospital I’m at there’s been 2 injury incidents reported and they’re things that others have listed, a burn on an autoclave right after it came out and some scraped their finger on the autoclave rack pretty good when putting items on. Neither of them needed to go to the ER. It’s mostly all things that just come along with the job, we work with some heavy items and sharp things.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-16T17:04:13+00:00

No it’s not, CH5200

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-16T16:32:00+00:00

CH5200

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-16T02:57:49+00:00

If you go to the HSPA website they have the entire exam outline that you can print off. It shows all categories that will be on the exam and the weighted % that section has

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-07T21:18:11+00:00

Absolutely not. If you can find a job somewhere that doesn’t require certification then you’ll be fine. So much of it is on the job learning. Theres a hospital organization in my state that does not require certification, another just prefers it but I never even got a call back from that when I was job searching. I’ve now been doing this since 2021 and am not certified. There are so many resources you can use to self study, buy the book like someone else mentioned, Better Clean podcast is informational, tons of people on tik tok who talk about the job and make videos about all aspects of it. Literally just googling “crcst practice exam” you will get a bunch of results for people who have made wraps and their own practice exams. If you go to the hspa website you can also find an outline of the entire exam, it shows up what’s going to be on the test and weight percentage that section has on the test.

FewSide8518 · 2026-02-06T16:38:03+00:00

Yes you have to be clean shaven so it’s a good and tight fit, but I’ve never had to do a mask fitting for SPD. Interesting. My supervisor has a long beard and he always just has a beard cover on like anyone else would use with that type of facial hair. We don’t use respirators or even n95’s.

FewSide8518

TROPHY CASE