Hygiene is slowly becoming a worldwide concern for everyone after the Coronavirus pandemic. The world is becoming obsessed with different ways of maintaining cleanliness and hygiene. Though most people are waking up to the importance of sanitation and hygiene now, surgeons and doctors who performed surgeries are not new to this process of keeping clean. Surgeries require all types of sanitation protocols and hygiene guidelines. They have to be extra careful and follow each and every available guideline to ensure proper hygiene is maintained at all times. Let’s have a look at some of these guidelines.
Latex Gloves
While doing surgery, doctors obviously need to wear gloves to prevent the transmission of infection from the patients to the doctor and vice versa. The gloves need to be strong and elastic at the same time so that there is a minimum probability of the glove rupturing during the procedure. The gloves come in a lot of contact with the patient’s tissue and blood, thus doctors mostly use latex gloves to stay on the safer side.
PPE suits or Scrubs
It is not enough to just cover the hands while performing surgery. In the older times, doctors used to simply wear an apron and rubber gloves to perform medical operations. Since the importance of hygiene has been recognized doctors now take a lot of advanced measures to keep everything hygienic. They now wear a scrub while operating, which is sometimes a single-time use dress for doctors. If the risk of infection is high then surgeons have to resort to wearing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) kits which include multiple impenetrable layers of clothing to achieve a high level of precaution.
Equipment coating and Sanitization
Leaving aside the human bodies of doctors and surgeons, the medical equipment used during medical procedures carry the maximum risk of transmitting infections. Things like syringes, scalpels, surgical scissors, etc need to be carefully sterilized before being used in the operation procedure. Other methods of maintaining hygiene include methods like applying PTFE or Teflon coating to the instruments to prevent their corrosion and to reduce friction to avoid unnecessary ruptures. Regular sanitizing and coating of medical tools is always a must.
Surgery theatre Sanitization
It would be surprising to know that there are a lot of microbes and infection-causing agents in the surgery room and on the surgery bed. It is sometimes difficult to sanitize the room and the bed before every surgery but it’s something that must be done. The chances of the patient getting an infection from a dirty bed are almost as high as getting it from the surgical tools. Using a spray machine to sanitize will always save time and spread the sanitizer evenly.
Waste disposal
After a lot of major surgeries, there is always a heap of waste containing used syringes and tissues full of blood. Even the scrubs or PPE suits are mostly contaminated by the patient’s blood and need to be thrown away. Leaving such items lying around will always increase the probability of transmission of infections. Not disposing of them properly might make the waste end up in the wrong hands from where it could cause further complications. Most medical institutes are now slowly waking up to the importance of proper waste disposal of biohazards.
Maintaining hygiene is important for every human being but it is highly essential for surgeons and doctors. They are responsible for the safety of their patients and the hygiene of their surroundings. Following the aforementioned points can certainly help you increase the hygiene and safety index by a lot.
