Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Tell Your Patients to Drink Up - March 2019 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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4 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A R C H 2 0 1 9 W e've always known about the hidden bac- terial threat in your OR's anesthesia work area, the microbes lingering on the anesthe- sia machine and the pathogens on the laryngoscope handle that didn't get a full cleaning between cases. Then there's the anesthesia provider's hands — be they bare or overdue for a fresh pair of gloves — as they intubate the patient, and prepare and deliver IV medications. And yet we're still struggling to prevent the infections that origi- nate from that challenging envi- ronment. Here are 3 takeaways from The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America's (SHEA) new guidance (osmag.net/yGWfT5) on infection prevention in the anesthesia work area. Hand hygiene We recommend anesthesia providers follow the World Health Organization's (WHO) My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene (osmag.net/7PBqyD): cleaning their hands before touching a patient, before clean/aseptic procedures, after body fluid exposure/risk, after 1 Anesthesia's Infection Control Challenges It's time for your providers to clean up their acts — and their workstations. Anesthesia Alert L. Silvia Munoz-Price, MD, PhD, and T. Andrew Bowdle, MD, PhD, FASE • A HIDDEN THREAT The anesthesia computer mouse and the anesthesia cart are among the most contaminated sur- faces in the OR. Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN, CNOR

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