"Neutral" sharps passing zone

[fezzin]

hi everyone!

I was wondering if you guys have a neutral zone for passing sharps at your hospital? I hardly have any experience in the OR and I was transferred to another hospital for training upon getting hired. At the place where I first trained they used a basin with a towel in it to pass all sharps to the surgeon. The new place I'm at passes the sharps by hand. Honestly, this terrifies me (as a new grad, pretty much everything terrifies me though, lol)! What's the policy at your hospital?

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

We're supposed to be using them. Most people will use a marker to designate a corner of the mayo stand or use a kidney basin as the neutral zone. There are surgeries that have exceptions though- microscope in use, patient in lithotomy, surgeon wearing loupes.

[LAM2010, BSN]

We've got the orange grippy things to put on the sterile field. They're for passing the sharps, but it's a challenge to get anyone to really use it. They're still passing the sharps by hand. I havent seen anyone get cut... yet.... Well, I did see someone get stuck by a needle, passing by hand - that was before our hospital made us start using the orange no-pass zone or whatever it's called.

Our travel nurses/scrubs say they've never seen anything like that at other places.

[Mr. & Mrs. RN]

Pass by hand almost always, but I have yet see them stick somebody.

[NurseLumpia]

We pass by hand, we mostly use the safety blades where the surgeons need to stow the blade into the sheath before passing back but then you have idiot med students trying to be "usefull" then you have to yell at them.. hehehehe..

[mrsilly]

I've seen the orange plastic "thingy" at my previous hospital. Everyone hated it and hardly used it.

[ladystinkington]

We mainly use a kidney dish to pass sharps (as mentioned previously in this thread) with the exception of certain specialities such as ent and max fax in which the surgeon tends to help themselves to the blade or have it passed by hand when using the microscope.

[daVinciNurse]

We use safety blades on about 50% of our cases, but of those, about 5% use them "correctly"--docs love to ask for an "open safety blade" and/or will just hand it back in the open position (totally defeating the purpose of a safety blade). Any laparoscopy or arthroscopy or plastics case gets non-safety blades, as well as deep pelvic cases and any number of procedures where the doc has gotten a waiver signed off on. I still try to utilize a hands-free zone when passing the knife for these cases. Its not always respected though! Just ALWAYS be mindful of where the sharps on your field are and speak up if you see anything that is a safety hazard!!

[JamieJCST]

We pass by hand. If I am working with a med student, new intern, or someone that I'm just not comfortable with I ask them to set down the sharp on my mayo.

[mactheknife]

We use a kidney dish. My staff were reluctant untill one of the scrubs got stabed and then fainted at the sight of her own blood. Now they all use a kidney dish.

[Scrubby]

We also use the kidney dish when passing scalpels. I pass sutures hand to hand though.

There's this one crabby old surgeon who is old school and if you pass him the scalpel in a plastic dish he'll throw it across the room and carry on about the good old days.

[Cyan8181]

Wow, I'm really surprised to hear that so many of you use a neutral zone. I work in a 22 room OR and we don't use anything like that. There was some committee discussion about safety blades a few years ago, but they were tried by one or two surgeons and didn't really go anywhere. There is one trauma surgeon who insists we use the disposable plastic pan that comes in the pack as a passing bin, but she's the only one and most people think if they ever get an injury, it will be during one of her cases since it's different than how we do it in every other case. Some surgeons will lay the knife or hypo on your mayo when they're done with it, but 95% of the time it's hand to hand.