FFP Bags in Running Water

She bent into the sink and picked up something held between her thumb and index finger. She handed it over to someone else. I thought she had picked up a mouse by its tail. But I am yet to see a girl do that, definitely not a third year resident in ob-gyn. By the time I had thought these thoughts, she bent in again and picked up another one. I looked carefully and discovered it was a fresh frozen plasma bag. We were in the OT. “Hey, what was that?” I asked. She turned around, not understanding what I had asked. “The sink is dirty, with scrub water, washed instruments water and what not. You must have picked up a lot of germs” I said. She smiled sheepishly. “Wash your hands immediately” I said. While she was doing that, I asked her, “why had you put those things in the sink?” “For thawing before transfusing them into a patient” she answered. I had thought someone had thrown used FFP bags into the sink instead of putting them in red bags for hazardous biomedical waste, to be sent for incineration. “In the sink?” I said, almost in shock. “It is full of bacteria and viruses, many of them pathogens. You will pierce the nozzle with a transfusion set, which wilol put those germs into the bag and then into the patient. Did you not realize that?” “Sir, I did not do it. The anesthetist did it.” So I went in search of the anesthetist. I found him all right. He was a first year resident, barely three months into residency. “I asked the servant for a bowl to immerse the FFP bags in” he said. “He told me there was no bowl, and he told me to put them in the sink.” I spent some time educating the anesthetist and the servant on why such a thing must not be done and went back to my chair. Then I had a sudden thought. I called the resident and asked her, “where do you usually put the FFP bags for thawing?” “In the sink” she answered truthfully. I was aghast. I called my unit Registrar and asked her the same question. “In the sink” she answered truthfully. I was aghast again. I called a senior resident who had been my Registrar in the previous post and was now with the other unit which was also in the OT with us. I asked her what she used to do. “In the sink” she answered truthfully “at times” she added as an afterthought, seeing that I was aghast with the previous answers and having known me for three years. I went to the staff room in the OT complex and told the staff members this story. “Eeek!” said a professor. “I feel like vomiting after hearing this.” Just then her Registrar came along looking for her. So I asked him the same question. “In running water” he said. “Where is the running water?” I asked him. “In the sink” he said. “How can you?” wailed his boss. “Do you put the things you eat in the sink before you eat them?” He seemed aghast at that idea, but was not disturbed a bit at putting FFP bags in the sink. I educated him, and then told the person in charge of holding the labor ward committee meeting to brief all residents on this issue in the next meeting. I could not see why they could not put a bowl under an open tap, and put the FFP bags in that bowl so that they would be in running water. I silently praised the Lord for not giving them the idea that running water was also found in the drain before it joined the gutter. Or perhaps they had that idea too, but it was too much trouble to go up to the drain. The sink was quite nearby and convenient too.