At 3 a.m. intake, a newly trapped DSH in kennel 4 triggered the motion-sensor faucet mid-briefing and power-washed my ringworm and bite-risk handouts. We still scanned, documented, coordinated with the on-call DVM, and tucked him into a 72-hour intake quarantine with flea control and rabies vax queued for post-hold — what’s your best ‘everything got soaked but the prophylaxis stayed on schedule’ moment?
I shave about a minute by placing a silicone “ortho stop” just mesial to the molar tube before I start, so the new NiTi can’t drift while I ligate — then I ligate from the midline out with a Mathieu. Wax‑tipped tweezers are fine, but they get gummy with lip balm; a quick alcohol wipe between arches keeps them grabbing, @OP.
3 a.m. sinks are chaos — ours power-washed my ringworm handouts too, . I slap a strip of blue painter’s tape over the motion sensor before intake and keep the sheets laminated in a clipboard sleeve; not as slick as @eclark45’s trick, but it buys dry papers while you queue the rabies vax. If tape’s a no-go, a nitrile glove finger over the sensor works, just don’t forget to pull it before your DVM scrubs.
And > thing that helped was writing down the exact handoff and timebox it to 15–20 min… Does that match what you’re running into? Agree on the timing — what dropped our no-shows about 20% was baking the risk tag into the chairside handoff and the reminder subject line (Orange — perio recheck in 3), so patients hear it twice and the new grads tie the 12‑point checklist to that window; tiny caveat: we ditched red/green for icons after a couple color‑blind misses.
Quick tip: we clip intake handouts inside a gallon Ziploc on a hard clipboard that hangs opposite the sink, so when the faucet does a surprise car wash the packet stays dry and we can still Sharpie notes. If you want reprints after an “everything got soaked but the prophylaxis” moment, add a small QR code to the kennel card linking to the PDFs; if the Ziploc clouds up, a cheap page protector works too.