lhawkins

Anyone have a protocol for handling specimens. Our current practice is the scrub tech places tissue in spec cup and hands it to the nurse circulator. The nurse labels the container, carries it to the dirty utility and pumps about 15mls of formalin into the spec cup. Proper PPE is worn during the process. Do we need a fume hood for the formalin? Any special storage precautions for Formalin or can we just keep the jug on our counter?

I can't believe the lab is okay with their current practices. After researching today, I have decided to forgo relabeling and just purchase sterile prefilled containers for each patient. Thanks for your help.

Our lab re-uses patient specimen containers (filled with 10% formalin). They rinse out the containers between patients and refill with 10% formalin and give them back to us to use again. Does this pose some type of cross contamination between different patient's specimens? Also anyone know how long the fomalin is good for? The containers are not labeled, so I am in the process of labeling them and need to put an expiration date on them. Thanks