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Comment period opens on new sterile field recommendations

Ambulatory Safety Monitor, March 10, 2005

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The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) recently reviewed and revised a series of new protocols for keeping the surgical field sterile during medical procedures.

The AORN's Recommended Practices Committee developed the "Recommended Practices for Maintaining a Sterile Field," which are intended, according to a statement on the AORN Web site, as "achievable recommendations representing what is believed to be an optimal level of practice" in ambulatory surgery centers, physicians' offices, traditional operating rooms, and other surgical settings.

The seven practices now up for public comment are relatively basic and
self-explanatory: All scrubbed personnel should function within a sterile field; sterile drapes should be used to establish a sterile field; items used within the sterile field should be sterile; all items introduced to a sterile field should be opened, dispensed, and transferred by methods that maintain item sterility and integrity; a sterile field should be maintained and monitored constantly; all personnel moving within or around a sterile field should do so in a manner that maintains the sterile field; and policies and procedures for maintaining a sterile field should be developed, reviewed periodically, revised as necessary, and readily available in the practice setting. The AORN's "Recommended Practices" offer specific techniques to best achieve these crucial goals.

The "Recommended Practices" will be available for public comment until March 25, and can be viewed in full by visiting http://www.aorn.org/proposed/maint.htm.

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