Developing and Validating Operating Room Safety Standards at El-Demardash Hospital

Abstract

Provision of a safe environment is a primary consideration in every health care setting. This is especially true with the operating room environment since it is surrounded by many hazards that include physical, chemical and biological hazards. The potential hazards might endanger the safety of the operating room personnel (nurses, anesthesiologists, surgeons and workers) because of the danger inherent in surgery and technically sophisticated equipment and procedures used, which place operating room personnel and patients at high risk for many hazards (Allen, 2001). Developing standards of intraoperative nursing intervention will enable the nurses to identify deficiencies in the provision of care, and to compare their performance with the required performance established in the standards. Furthermore, if the standards of intraoperative nursing intervention are set clearly, they demonstrate what nurses need to do to provide acceptable level of care through the use of performance checklists of the procedures most commonly done in the operative room derived from the standards (Gibbs, 2000). Operating room safety has a significant influence on patient care. The researcher, found that multiple approaches are needed to advance a culture of patient safety. Ultimately the best process occurs when physicians take ownership of the cultural change. Barday and Barclay (2008) recommend that whatever approach systems are taken to implementing a culture of safety in the operating room that physicians are intimately involved in the process.