Nurses scrub

Nurses and doctors in full scrubs waited at St. Mary s for the ambulances to arrive. They sat outside the ER impatiently as the minutes ticked by without word of what had happened or when victims would be released to hospitals from decontamination showers. (Bhatt, 2001)... 

The standard surgical scrub is a povidone-iodine (Betadine) antiseptic skin preparation. This should be brought to the attention of the surgical nurse who will be preparing the surgical site so that a substitute can be used. 

DS Paulson. Comparative evaluation of five surgical scrub formulations. Assoc Operating Room Nurses J 60(2) 246-256, 1994. 

Association of Operating Room Nurses (AORN). Recommended practices surgical hand scrubs. AORN J 52 830-836, 1990. 

Association of Operating Room Nurses, Inc. Standards and Recommended practices Recommended practices for Surgical Hand Scrubs. 1995, pp. 185-190. 

Anaesthetist informs team of special patient needs Surgeon briefs team on the surgical procedure Scrub-nurse and circulating nurse confirm instruments check... 

Intra-operative Surgeon asks team whether they are ready to start Okay to start acknowledged by team members Surgeon provides clear instrument requests to scrub nurse Nurses confirm final counts on swabs and instruments Anaesthetist instructs assistant on reversal of anaesthesia... 

At the team prompt, the staff surgeon looked up at the surgical fellow and [the observer] and said, We ve done a few of these before. He proceeded to the next prompt. There was no mention or introduction of the student scrub nurse. 

Story-telling was used to spread the word about successful interventions where, for example, a scrub nurse had constructively challenged a consnltant and thwarted a potential incident. A newsletter was prodnced called It s complicated which shared good practice and enabled theatre teams to learn from each other. 

Each participant, from case cart technicians to scrub and circulating nurses to the surgeons and anesthesiologists, knew their part of the procedure, but there was a lack of shared understanding of the sequencing, procedures, and risks that eventually had led to the fire," explained the executive. 

Each team member should understand all aspects of the task at hand even if they will not be performing those steps directly. This is not to take away from the team member who normally performs this task, but it is a safety check to ensure that the correct steps are being followed in every procedure, every time. In the OR, the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the circulator nurse, and scrub technician all must understand the steps in a particular procedure. The surgeon, for example, should be able to start the electrocautery devices and know instrumentation including the details of suture material and where to find it. 

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