Hi All, I'll be doing a risk assessment for medical staff in a hospital operating room in the near future... This is the first time I will have worked in this environment and have started to draw up a list of the hazards staff working in an operating room will encounter (eg, sharps, biohazards, slips and trips, manual handling (moving unconscious patient etc), exposure to drugs, stress...) Does anyone out there have experience in carrying out OR risk assessments and could advise on any less obvious hazards likely to be present that I should not miss? Thanks in anticipation, Paul

I agree with Ian's recommendation, in that the experts are those working in the operating room. Ideally a small team made up of a combination of operating team members (nurse, surgeon, radiographer, etc) should be assembled and possibly with your checklist to examine and quantify the different hazards/risks.

My wife is an operating theatre manager and I have heard her talk of things such as use of volatile anaesthetic gases and the need for scavenging systems, COSHH in general in relation to things like bone cement, staff injury including eye splashes with body fluids, to name a few, most of which users on this forum will not have had anything to do with. Assaults by and assistance with aggressive patients in recovery who are still coming round from their anaesthetic and are confused and scared as they may not know what is happening, and panic and lash out or try to get up before they are able to. That, and areas such as correct scrub technique, correct gloves regarding latex etc, and double gloving. Sometimes operations require reps from the company supplying implants to be present in the theatre during operations as they are there to help the surgeon who may be trialling the operation and may require advice, so that is also something to bear in mind. Also, correct staffing numbers and skill mix, and anaesthetic staff presence(by this I mean nurses and ODPs, not doctors who are anaesthetists). And that is just from talking to someone who works in the area you are looking at. There is so much that you really should follow the advice from Ian and Ray above, and talk to someone relevant in the local hospital.

John, Try speaking to one of the Senior Operating Department Practitioners, they have a wealth of knowledge and an intimate knowlege of all the practices of the Theatre environment. Trust me, I am married to one and she seems to know absolutely everything ;)