Contact precautions in the OR???

[Mr. & Mrs. RN]

So this is a constant topic that is complained about in our OR. Someone told me that other hospitals don't follow contact precautions in the OR which seems ridiculous to me, but I've only worked in one OR. It just seems way too complicated to maintain good contact precautions in the OR. Here's a synopsis of what our OR is like:

We wear gown and gloves and disposable hats back to the room. Someone comes by and completely covers the gurney with a clean sheet. If available, we have an outside "runner" who hands the circ everything so we don't stick our hands in the warmer or cupboards. We leave the case cart outside of the room during the case, but then it gets brought into the room afterwards anyways. The room gets terminaled, but the RN is in charge of making sure equipment like the computer, Pyxis, and SCD machine get wiped down. If we are on evenings or weekends, we don't have a runner. It's very difficult to maintain good contact precautions. I know not everything gets cleaned, there's just too much stuff in the room, especially with how intricate the anesthesia machine is.

I'm just curious what other hospitals do for contact precautions for MRSA and VRE patients.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

One of the things we do that seems to help other objects stay cleaner is that once the patient is draped, those not scrubbed can shed the gowns. We don't go as far as having a runner, but we are to take off gown and gloves and wash our hands before touching anything outside the room. We don't even really do extra cleaning after a case in isolation either, which doesn't really make sense to me.