Five great reasons to provide your orientees with a proper orientation period

This is part five of HIGH FIVE, a multi-part series on leading a successful and fulfilling sterile processing career. 

The orientation period at my hospital is 19 weeks long. 19 weeks. The areas of responsibility for our SPD are:  Instrument Assembly, Sterilization, Case Picking, and Decontamination. New employees get 6 weeks each on Assembly and Case Picking, 3 weeks in Decontamination, and 2 weeks on Sterilization. Case Picking and Decontamination each feature a week of return to Assembly, and every new employee gets a review week at the end during which they are free to work whichever duties they feel they need a little extra training in.

In my part of the world, most of the technicians we hire come in with no healthcare experience, so an extended and supported orientation period is necessary to acclimate them both to the hospital environment, and to the duties and great responsibility of Sterile Processing. If, like mine, your department regularly hires technicians off the street, it is imperative that they receive an orientation that allows them to be successful in the important work of serving the patients of your facility.

So what makes up a successful orientation regimen? Here are 5 things to keep in mind when on-boarding new, inexperienced employees into your Sterile Processing Department:

1. Allow ample time to learn the trade. Sterile processing is a complex field. Those of us that have worked with the machines and instruments for many years forget that EVERYTHING is new to a new employee. This is compounded by the fact that the job itself is new. So, the Orientee must learn not only a new building and new people, but new systems and all of those instruments. Of these, the most important thing to our patients is to teach the new person the instruments and the equipment and procedures used to clean and sterilize them. These things are important to our new employee too, but equally important are the cafeteria hours, where to store their lunch, and if they will make friends at work, or have trouble with another staff member or their supervisor. Allow your Orientees a good amount of time at an introductory level position for them to get comfortable with their surroundings, facility, and co-workers. Remember that the craftsperson that made the instrument in the learner’s hands apprenticed for years to make it.
2. Designate a trainer for every hour of every day of every week. New and inexperienced sterile processing technicians prefer to have a knowledgeable person to go to with their questions. If left to their own devices, they feel lost in the complexity of the job before them. They require a good communicator and above all a patient trainer. Your patients and providers need for them to have an experienced person at their hip to continually check their work.  However long your orientation period is, each learner should have a teacher with them on all jobs for the entire time.  The risks to patient safety and customer confidence are too great to have an inexperienced person going it alone on any job in the sterile processing arena.
3. Give extra time to the duties that directly affect your customers. Every job in the sterile processing department is important to your patients.Every step must be fulfilled perfectly every time, and every task in every job affects your department’s customers and patients. However, there are some jobs that affect patients and customers in real time, and others that are more behind the scenes. Many SPDs have a Core Tech or Dispensing position that communicates with surgical technologists, nurses and doctors in the OR. This technician must have all of the answers ready at their fingertips at all times. This is an example of a position will require a longer period of one-with-one training to assure that our customers important needs are met in a timely manner.
4. Mix up your training to enhance your training. It is a truism that the various jobs of the CS/SPD are linked together. Work flows from one to the next in an orderly way (ideally) to assure that all steps are met. When training new staff, it is a good idea to intermix training on the various tasks to enhance the training of each.  For instance, when training a new person in the Decontamination area, incorporate a return to Instrument Assembly for a week.  Learning in one area will enhance the learning in the other, as new techs who have become used to seeing instruments taken apart and clean can see them in the state that they come from the procedure area.
5. Offer a week of review. In my facility, the last week of Orientation is a Review week. During Review week, all of the jobs in the department are staffed. The Orientee can choose which jobs to do for each shift, knowing they have an experienced backup also scheduled for the same job. Some Orientees opt to do one job for the entire week, while others will go through several of the jobs to get one last shift in that job with support.

There are areas of the country where CS/SPD programs are readily available at the post-secondary level. In these regions, hiring Certified staff is the norm, and On the Job training consists of familiarizing Orientees with the systems and policies of the facility. The new technician may have even done clinicals at the facility where they are hired!

Four progressive states have made certification into law, and there the opportunities to learn sterile processing and central service as a trade are growing. Most facilities, however, still hire new CS/SPD techs off the street, with some hospital experience or no experience at all. As managers, supervisors and educators, we must remember the experience of taking a complex and unfamiliar job, in a large and complex new place, with demanding professionals as customers, and the safety of their patients dependent on us. With this in mind, we can assure that our Orientees feel comfortable and well trained so that they become confident and competent sterile processing professionals.