More than 70 staff members of a San Diego-area hospital are calling for a halt of all surgeries at the facility due to unidentified black, brown, and gray specks on surgical trays, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The objecting staff have signed a petition to spur hospital officials to pause procedures until the issue is resolved. But officials at the facility, the Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center, have rejected the call, according to the Union-Tribune. A spokesperson for the facility did not respond to voicemails from Ars.
[...] Haynes [ a surgical technician at Zion] added that management had assured staff that the particles—whatever they are—are sterile. Surgical equipment goes through a two-step process before use: a wash and then a trip through an autoclave, a pressurized steam machine used for sterilization. But Haynes argued that simply being sterilized doesn't mean it's fit for surgery.
"The fact that a contaminant is "safe" (not a microbe) doesn't mean that contaminant is implantable," she said.
The Union-Tribune noted that the hospital's troubles seemed to begin last month when the facility reported a problem with its hot water lines.
[...] Earlier this year, researchers at a Boston hospital reported on water purification systems in hospital ice machines inadvertently stripping out chlorine, leading to the deaths of three patients.
Leapfrog, a national nonprofit watchdog of hospital quality and safety, recently gave the Zion Medical Center an "A" grade.
(Score: 4, Touché) by VLM on Saturday June 10, @03:32PM (3 children)
It feels like a coverup.
Its a friggin hospital. These people are not helpless and tool-less.
Put the dust under a microscope and you don't need to be a licensed pathologist or even a chemist to figure out if its iron filings or asbestos needles or little pieces of plastic or gasket material or WTF.
Lots of QA/QC programs are graded not on being flawless but on how they handle problems; so its quite possible they'll maintain their "A" grade because of how they detect and fix this issue; donno if doing some big coverup as per above helps QA/QC scores, probably not LOL.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10, @03:41PM (2 children)
They are not helpless and tool-less, but sending it out for a lab analysis will cost money, and hospitals are ALL about 'cost optimization.' Sure, the lab analysis might not be too expensive, but if it comes back that they need to change procedures to prevent/remove it, THAT could eat into their profits. Better to rationalize it as "whatever it is, it will be sterile anyway" and move on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday June 10, @05:50PM (1 child)
Whatever's on those trays, it's never been through safety testing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday June 10, @06:22PM
Really clean foreign object debris is still, at its essence, foreign object debris.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 10, @04:37PM
Sounds like the Navy to me. Every time the guns are fired, you sweep paint chips, insulation, and assorted unidentified particles all over the ship - including sickbay. Ditto for heavy seas - it doesn't even require that the seas tower 50 feet over the deck before crashing down on you. Big ships like aircraft carriers suffer less of that kind of thing - but I'd hate to have a surgeon operating on me below the landing arrestors!
Sounds like they need to get their act together, before those particles start killing people.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 10, @05:30PM
I, personally, am disgusted with the level of contaminants that are permissible in IV fluids.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11, @03:28AM (1 child)
Bunch of whiners looking for a payout. Get on with your job.
(Score: 4, Touché) by janrinok on Sunday June 11, @06:21AM
The care and health of patients IS their job.
I suspect that you are actually trolling, but if what you have expressed is your genuine belief then I hope when you need medical care they are equally as careless with your treatment too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11, @07:10AM
Just sayin, even some restaurants have higher standards... Plates with such stuff won't be served to customers... They're not going to say it's gone through a dishwasher and has been "sterilized".
No problem if you're fine with your hospital having "mystery meat cafeteria" standards... But seems like the staff are objecting.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday June 12, @04:39PM (1 child)
The contaminant comes from patients' blood.
Remember all those harmless patented nano particle additives in vaccines?
Enjoy your achievements in ideology, science folks!
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(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13, @07:12PM
It's probably just some anti-vaxxers braincells. Unfortunately they are not harmless.