dents, started wearing green scrubs while working in the clinic or on
the floor. They buy and launder the scrubs, which they're not allowed
to wear in the OR. The color-coded system gives physicians personal-
ly owned and comfortable outfits to wear in non-sterile patient care
areas, and reserves professionally laundered scrubs for use where
proper cleaning matters most.
Another potential plus of working with a professional laundry service:
You might lose fewer surgical instruments that inadvertently get mixed
up in used textiles. In fact, the healthcare sustainability advocacy group
Practice Greenhealth estimates a hospital can conservatively save
$20,000 a year in returned items that may have otherwise been lost.
In 2010, AORN issued new recommended practices for surgical
attire that discouraged the home laundering of scrubs. Instead, says
AORN, scrubs should be cleaned by healthcare-approved or accredit-
ed laundry facilities. Take AORN's advice and leave scrub laundering
to the professionals. It
makes good sense for
patient safety and
gives you one less
thing to worry about.
OSM
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | February 2015
E-mail
dcook@outpatientsurgery.net.
