Cloth surgical hats

[Mourkoth]

Hey, I have an informal poll, or a question for everyone. We reciently had an incident in sterile processing where there was some hair found in one of our drills (after processing). We were opening for a crainotomy and there was a hairball on the head of our Anspach drill. the manager assumes it was not a problem in sterile processing and instead it was a nursing problem resulting in no nurses are allowed in sterile processing unless they are wearing one of the hospital issue paper surgical hats. Cloth hats are banned.

It doesn't matter that almost all of the doctors wear cloth (designer style) hats and it is perfectly acceptable to have cloth hats directly over a surgical wound. It is not acceptable to go where dirty instruments are processed with a cloth hat. Which gets me down to my long winded point.

Is cloth hats allowed in your facility or is the standardized paper hat the only allowable hat?

[ewattsjt]

Strangely enough we are allowed to wear cloth hats under bouffants but paper caps are banned from our facility.

[brewerpaul]

Our OR allows both paper and cloth. Obviously, cloth hats need to be kept clean. We all wear identical blue scrubs supplied by the OR, so having wild and crazy hats is a nice touch of individuality.

[RacheloneRN]

We are allowed to wear cloth if all hair is covered. Wash to AORN Standards.

[wtbcrna, MSN, DNP, CRNA]

Just out of curiosity, if all the nurses are required to wear paper surgical hats, do they make all the surgeons/anesthesia providers follow the same rules or is it like most places where the docs don't have to follow the same rules?

[OR male nurse]

Is cloth hats allowed in your facility or is the standardized paper hat the only allowable hat?

The last hospital I worked at was like another person said. The RN's and ST's had to wear hospital issued paper hats. The surgeons and MDA's could wear whatever hat they wanted to and it wasn't questioned whether they washed them, if they did, and if they did wash them was it according to AORN standards. The surgeons and MDA's were not employed by the hospital and could do whatever they wanted as a result. Many times I had to listen to them tell me that "They (the hospital) can make up all the rules they want to. I don't have to follow them."