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cleaned. But the further away from the OR table we went, the more cleaning
misses we spotted. This is understandable. You're not thinking to wipe down the
handrails, the IV pole, the door handle, or the computer monitor and keyboard
that were touched with gloved hands.
The lesson here: Educate your staff that all surfaces matter, even those
things that didn't contact patients, especially those things far away from
where the patient will be. In the quest for 5-minute turnovers and the rush to
get the next patient in, this can be a challenge.
Another challenge is convincing staff that a gloved hand is in no way a
sterile hand. When wearing clean gloves, think about how many surfaces
you touch. If, for example, you scratch your nose and then position the
overhead lights, the lights could be vectors for spreading germs to
patients.
2. Work from dirty to clean. When cleaning OR surfaces, always go
from dirty to clean. "Tackle your worst first," is a good way to remember this.
Think about when you mop the floor. You
mop from the far end of the room and
work yourself toward the door, as opposed
to walking back and forth. The same
applies to surface cleaning. You want to
start where the patient was: on the bed, in
the center of the room, where the surgery
took place. This is where you'll find the
most splatter, fluid and gross contaminants.
Strip the bed, get instruments in the case
cart, wipe the back table and then work
yourself outside toward the door with a
clean mop head. Perhaps our tendency to
focus on the OR bed explains why surface
E N V I R O N M E N T A L H Y G I E N E
SQUEAKY CLEAN Teach your environmen-
tal services team to be more mindful of all of
the surfaces in the OR, regardless of how
close they are to patients.
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN
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