How to Ensure the Safety of Patients in an Operation Theatre Setting

There is hardly any room to argue the fact that when a patient is taken to an operation theatre for a surgery, ensuring that he or she is safe before, during, and after the surgery is of paramount importance. With the threat of hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant infections looming large, no measures can be considered excessive to make sure that that does not happen. Having that in mind, listed below are some of the necessary steps that need to be taken to guarantee the safety of a patient in a modular operation theatre.

3 Measures You Must Take to Maintain Patient Safety in Operation Theatres

· Accuracy of Scheduling 

One of the first things to do is to make sure that there are no scheduling conflicts with a particular operation theatre. There can be no wastage of time where time itself is of the essence, and everything must be done to guarantee that time is optimised. It should be clearly stated how long a specific operation is going to take with adequate buffering time taking into account that the process may take longer than originally intended. The last thing anyone would want is to make a patient wait outside the theatre while the previous operation is finishing up, in the least because it leaves a lot of room for infections being acquired.

· Preparation of Patients 

The next thing that needs to be done is to ensure that the patient who is about to go under the knife is properly prepared for the operation. All sorts of pertinent tests should have been performed on the patient to make sure that he or she is physically capable of undergoing the surgery, and if there is any room for doubts about it, and in case there is no way to say for certain that there can be no medicines that can be used, the surgery should ideally be put off until a later time. This, of course, depends on the urgency of the surgery. The hospital also needs to get the proper consent from the patient concerned or the family members to go ahead with the surgery.

· Setup 

One of the most important things to make sure of is that the required setup for the operation is done in a way there is no room for any mistakes. The first thing on the mind of the hospital staff should be to have all the necessary equipment within reach. Another thing that just has to be ensured is that the patient is properly anesthetised so that there is no chance for them to wake up in the middle of surgery and giving rise to an awkward and uncomfortable situation indeed. Everything needs to be exactly where they should be during the course of the operation. 

As long as these things are religiously done before and during the surgery, followed by adequate after-surgery care, one can safely believe that the patient will get through it and make a full recovery. There can be, however, exceptions despite all the best efforts.