Sterilization and reprocessing
The only room in the practice where falling behind stops everything else
Instrument reprocessing is a queue. When nobody owns it, the queue is served by whoever can step away from a chair, and the practice runs at whatever rate that turns out to be. WORKFORCE staffs sterilization across British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Washington.
Same room, two service rates
Watch the backlog decide your afternoon
Cassettes arrive at the same rate either way. The only thing that changes is how many moves the room can make while they do. Switch who is running it.
The sterilization room
Who is running it today
Receive
0Transport from the operatory
Clean
0Ultrasonic or washer
Inspect
0Check, sort, and package
Sterilize
0Autoclave cycle
Store
0Cool, log, and put away
0
Back on the shelf
0
Waiting in the room
Reprocessing squeezed between patients. Every move is somebody stepping away from a chair to make it.
Illustrative. Real reprocessing times depend on the instrument, the cycle, and the standard in force at your practice. Nothing here is a timing claim.
The work does not disappear when nobody is hired to do it
It gets distributed, in small pieces, across people who were hired for something else.
- Your assistants
- An assistant running instruments between patients is not assisting. They are doing two jobs badly on purpose, because the alternative is a chair sitting empty.
- Your hygienists
- Turning over their own room eats the ten minutes that were meant to absorb a late patient. It is the quietest way a hygiene column falls behind.
- Your office manager
- Somebody is keeping the logs, chasing the pouches, and noticing when a cycle failed. Where there is no dedicated person, that somebody usually has another whole job.
How offices usually buy it
One day a week
The catch-up day. Common in practices that have grown past their room without having grown past their staffing.
A run of days
Cover while your regular tech is on leave, or through a stretch of surgical days that generate far more than an ordinary week.
A second pair of hands during growth
You have added chairs and the room has not caught up. Temporary support while you decide whether the role is permanent.
Across several sites
Group practices moving one person between locations on a fixed rota, rather than staffing every room independently.
What is ours and what is yours
Infection control is the area where a staffing agency is most tempted to imply more than it does. We would rather draw the line in public and be held to it.
Employment, licensing where it applies, and insurance
On a temporary placement the professional is our employee. Payroll, source deductions, remittances and insurance sit with us, and any registration their role requires is verified before they are scheduled.
The reprocessing program itself
Your protocols, your cycle monitoring, your logs, your equipment, and your record-keeping. These are set by your practice and its regulator. We staff the room. We do not write, audit, validate, or certify what happens in it.
Training on your room, on the day
Every sterilization room is laid out differently and runs different equipment. Somebody has to walk a new person through yours. It is fifteen minutes and it is not something an agency can do from a distance.
What they have actually done
Professionals list the reprocessing work they have done and the equipment they have run. We match that against your request. We do not grade anybody's technique, and any agency claiming to would be telling you something it cannot know.
What it costs
We publish set rates by city for hygienists, assistants, chairside, and reception, and an office cannot pay under them. Sterilization is not one of those four categories, so there is no figure on this page to point at. Tell us your city and the pattern you want covered and we will quote it before you post anything.
On temporary placements the rate is all-in. Payroll taxes, remittances, vacation accrual, and insurance are ours rather than a line you reconcile afterwards. If a placement becomes permanent, a placement fee applies at that point, quoted up front and priced to stay competitive with what a recruiter would charge.
Stop making people choose between the chair and the autoclave
Tell us your city, your volume, and the days you want covered.