Interactions between anesthesiologists and the environment while providing anesthesia care in the operating room.
We describe 1,132 contacts between anesthesiologists and the operating room. Objects most commonly touched included anesthesia machines and keyboards. Only 13 hand hygiene events were witnessed during 8 hours of observations. Line insertions, bronchoscopies, or blood exposures were not followed by hand hygiene. Stopcocks were accessed 66 times and only disinfected on 10 (15%) of these occasions.
Department of Medicine, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL; Department of Anesthesiology, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL; Department of Public Health Sciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL; Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, FL. Electronic address: smunozprice@med.miami.edu.
L Silvia
LS
Munoz-Price
David A
DA
Lubarsky
Kristopher L
KL
Arheart
Guillermo
G
Prado
Timothy
T
Cleary
Yovanit
Y
Fajardo-Aquino
Dennise
D
Depascale
Scott
S
Eber
Philip
P
Carling
David J
DJ
Birnbach
D000758:Anesthesia / Q000379:methods*; D004783:Environmental Microbiology; D063373:Hand Hygiene; D006801:Humans; D009873:Operating Rooms; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013530:Surgical Wound Infection / Q000517:prevention & control*
Anesthesia providers; Environmental contacts; Hand hygiene; Intraoperative