Hospital operating theatres

For very many years it has been common practice to improve the electrical conductivity of plastics and rubbers by the incorporation of certain additives like special grades of carbon black. Such materials were important, for example, in hospital operating theatres where it was essential that static charges did not build up, leading to explosions involving anaesthetics. 

McDonald, R., Waring, J. and Harrison, S. 2006. Rules, safety and the narrativisation of identity A hospital operating theatre case study. Sociology of Health and Illness, 28(2), 178-202. 

One of the most potent routes for transmission of bacterial disease is via the air. Cross-infeetion in hospital wards, infeetion in operating theatres, the transmission of disease in elosed spaces such as cinemas and other places of assembly, in the ward rooms and erew s quarters of ships and in submarines are all well known. Of equal importance is the provision of a bacteria-fiee environment for aseptic manipulations generally. Clearly, the disinfeetion of atmospheres is a worthwhile field of study and to this end much research has been done. It is equally clearly important to be able to evaluate preparations claimed to be air disinfeetants. 

At each incident 14 operating theatres were functional. Two halls which were transformed into temporary operating theatres were ready as reserve in case of increase in hospitalizations. 

Outbreaks of disease have been caused by those with artificial fingernails. In 2004 there was an outbreak of Klebsiella pneumoniae among premature babies in a US intensive care unit, caused by bacteria from a nurse s artificial nails. A few years previously it was Pseudomonas aeruginosa that threatened several newborn babies in a New York hospital and this was traced to the same cause. In Canada three patients who had had surgery on their spinal cord developed Candida infections of the spinal disks and this was traced to an operating theatre technician who had artificial nails. An intensive care unit in Oklahoma City saw 16 patients die as a result of contracting Pseudomonas aeruginosa from two nurses who had artificial nails. Thankfully such outbreaks are now extremely rare. 

Importantly, such sophisticated techniques have also been exploited from a highly sensitive sterile-zone of an operation theatre in a hospital to the chemical laboratory for... 

Healthcare and hygiene products are an important sector in the field of medicine and surgery. The range of products available is vast but typically they are used either in the operating theatre or on the hospital ward for the hygiene, care and safety of staff, and patients. Table 5.6 illustrates the range of products used in this category and includes the fibres and/or materials used and the method of manufacture. 

Launched as a rratiortal safety improvemerrt irritiative by the National Patient Safety Agency in 2009, the wide variation in approaches to its implementation provide a good case study about how safety crrltures vary across different hospitals. Implementation approaches for the WHO Srrrgical Safety Checklist have ranged from the please use this checklist in yorrr operating theatre from next Monday to, at the other end of the spectrurrr, well designed implemerrtation plans (Box 7.3). 

At UCLH, operating theatre teams led the adaptation and implementation of the checklist. Most notably, implementation did not focus on the checklist per se, but on resolving issues with poor communication, teamwork and culture in the operating theatres. Whilst the checklist provides a platform for structuring team communication, the hospital had a clear goal that bigger cultural issues needed to be addressed in order to improve patient safety. 

Within pharmacy, aseptic handling is carried out in a controlled environment by trained staff. In any hospital, however, aseptic handling also takes place in clinical areas such as wards and operating theatres [4, 5]. This chapter only discusses aseptic handling in pharmacy. Aseptic handling in clinical areas is described in Sect. 13.8. 

This chapter deals with the medical and related health care sector more precisely the textiles used in the operating theatre and hospital ward for the hygiene, care and safety of staff and patients. 

Group 111 - this waste is considered hospital waste of biological risk and is contaminated hazardous waste. The destination of this type of waste is incineration or another efficient treatment (autoclaving or exposure to microwaves), allowing it then to be considered as urban waste. If it is contaminated material with blood, such as waste that proceeds from the operating theatre, haemodialysis units and clinical pathology, the destination of the waste is solely incineration. 

We would like to thank all the staff of the Southern Health Simulation and Skills Centre, and Biomedical engineers who assisted in die development and delivery of the program, and the operating theatre staff of die Alfred hospital for their participation. 

We may define capacity in terms of the treatment pathways of patients (Rechel et al. 2010), and the resources that constrain them (bottlenecks). The ccmstraining elements could be the number of beds, operating theatres, diagnostic equipment, and the specialist staff. To identify a bottleneck resource, the pathways must be tracked to examine whether one or more pathways intersect at a particular resource causing possible bottlenecks. The objective would be to find the shortest path for each patient within the network, while minimizing delays at bottlenecks. This approach has major implications for patient satisfaction and hospital capabilities, as it focuses on the patient. 

These hospitals have all the up to date equipment required for the optimum rehabilitation of injured persons. In addition to operating theatres. X-ray departments and so on they also have all the apparatus required for modern therapeutic exercises—physical treatment, occupational therapy, sport for the disabled— and the necessary trained staff. The hospitals also contain, as far as required, special departments for spinal cord injuries, serious burns, hand injuries and so on. They are supported either by individual BGs or by a group of several BGs in the form of a society under civil law. All these hospitals have formed a federation, in which the practical and the scientific work is co-ordinated and research on future procedures is undertaken jointly by the practitioners and scientists concerned. 

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