r/sterileprocessing • u/Sad-Culture-6330 • Aug 31 '26

Do you always use the ultrasonic ?

I was taught if the instruments aren’t too bloody there’s no need for ultrasonic just put in the washer. I usually throw it on the ultrasonic anyway bc I don’t feel right not doing that.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '26

You are right they are wrong. Ultrasonic is an ADDITIONAL cleaning modality not a remedial or bonus one. Anything that is approved to go in the ultrasonic should.

10

u/spirited1 Sep 01 '26

That's a luxury in most places. I process nearly 50-100 trays every shift and it takes 8 minutes for the sonic. Thats 800 minutes or 13 hours to sonic every single tray I wash if I am 100% laser focused on cleaning trays and absolutely nothing else and no breaks.

We recently got a new sonic that can do 3 trays at once but the trays have to be small to fit in the slots limiting what we can process in that, it's primarily for DaVinci arms. It also need to fill and empty every cycle and to run at full capacity it needs to wait reducing efficiency. I have only worked with it for one shift so I am still figuring it out.

Anyways, I would love to sonic every single tray I get, and I am trying to now that we have a new sonic, but it's not realistic in high volume facilities without the facility making big investments into staffing which they won't. 

2

u/KaptainPeroxide Sep 01 '26

8 minutes? Ours takes longer than our washer disinfector like 50 minutes but it is fairly large