How to Wrap a Veterinary Surgical Pack

How to clean, organize, wrap and sterilize a basic surgical pack for veterinary use.

Before touching any instruments, identify “sharps” (needles, scalpel blades) that may need to be removed from the pack.

Remove scalpel blade from handle and place blades and needles in an appropriate sharps disposal container. IMPORTANT: Always remove pull them away from your body. Always dispose sharps of in a sharps container.

Place instruments in soak with water and instrument soap to prepare them to go in the ultrasonic cleaner. Allow to soak for 5-10 minutes.

Remove instruments from soak and scrub, then place in ultrasonic cleaner.

Set cleaner to desired settings, then start.

Once the cleaner is finished, remove instrument basket and place instruments out to dry. IMPORTANT: Leave instruments open to dry. Instruments may be patted dry to quicken this process.

Once instruments are dry, close instruments and sort straight tipped instruments, curved tipped instruments, and other instruments.

Organize straight instruments biggest to smallest and curved instruments biggest to smallest side the spay hook through the handles.

Lay instruments onto two layers of drapes. Drapes should be laid out so that points are out up, down, left and right (diamond, not square). Instruments should be laying square in the middle. Other instruments should be arranged around instruments on spay hook to create a square.

Place an accordion folded fenestrated drape and three stacks of gauze (approximate height of drape) into a square on top on instruments.

Pull the corner of the drape pointing towards you up away from you, then, leaving enough the fabric over the instruments to cover them pull the excess fabric pointing back down towards you.

Holding the first fold down, pull one side across to cover the instruments (in the same way the bottom was pulled across) and then pull excess fabric back the other direction. Repeat this for the other side.

Holding all these folds down, only the top should be left unfolded. This can now be pulled down and tucked into the “pocket” created by the right and left sides.

Place a tri-folded huck towel over the first layer. Wrap the second drape layer as you did the first.

Using instrument tape, label your pack as appropriate.

Place in the autoclave on appropriate settings and start.

Open the autoclave to vent to dry when the machine indicates.

When the dry cycle is complete, remove pack from autoclave. Insure that the instrument tape has turned striped to indicate that the place has been effectively sterilized. If it has not, the pack will need to be run again.