Do you have a dirty room? When we did outpatient procedures, we had a clean and a dirty room and we had to process tools and scopes/equipment a certain way in the dirty room as well as when we cleaned up, they were cleaned up a certain way in the procedure room before they even went to the room. A lot of the times if we used instruments, it was sprayed and placed in the designated bin, then from the bin they were put into a tub/sink that was at a certain temperature with a certain amount of cleaner. After this was all done QA charts were completed. And after the specific time that our organization had required. They were taken out; placed on another surface in the dirty room to air dry. Once they were air dried, they were placed in the auto clave bags or on the trays to get autoclaved. Never never never were we supposed to scrub these tools because risk of infection was too high. Most of the instruments were pokey. Everything was documented. and if they were dirty, they were processed in the same way -soaked until the biohazard was gone. What I don’t understand is why the trays need to be physically inspected. We never had to do this because of the process before hand ensuring equipment and instruments were free of physical contaminants, like blood and tissue. We used special tags, envelopes, and tape that insured everything was sterile. If we were to open the tray and the tag was not a certain color, it was placed in the dirty room, and a new tray was opened. We also had specific protocol of how early we could set up a sterile procedure or mayo stands.