Published Dec 6, 2017
bw217
5 Posts
Everyone, please share what would you do if you see an insect flying in the OR. I was a circulator last week and saw a fly so close to the sterile back table and I had no idea how to kill it...
dianah, ASN
8 Articles; 4,501 Posts
Challenging situation!
Just a suggestion:
Call for a brief halt to the procedure.
If there is time, cover your sterile fields.
Turn all the lights off and briefly open a door, so the only light coming into the room is through there.
The fly should head towards the light and can either be shoo-ed out of the room or killed when far away from the sterile field(s).
Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN
6 Articles; 11,935 Posts
In addition to what dianah said, if your facility happens to still have those old x-ray box lights on the wall, turning those on and the other lights in the room off can attract them to the light and then... SMACK! No more fly.
Thanks ! great ideas
amoLucia
7,736 Posts
WOW!
What a thing to think of by someone who didn't do OR. Some 40 years nsg and I'd never think of a fly in the OR. I guess it happens more freq than one would guess ...
rkitty198, BSN, RN
420 Posts
Wow!
I see flies on the surgical oncology floor. Just last week I had a patient in hospice with a fly, doing its fly thing around the head of the hospice patient it was just so nasty and unsanitary. I tried to get it out of there, but there was so many family members. I couldn't just tell them all to leave so that I could um get the fly to leave their dying loved ones head and open mouth. I even tried using the yaunker. I told them I needed to clean the patient but alas the fly left, and then came back a few hours later! Grrr!
GadgetRN71, ASN, RN
1,840 Posts
An older surgeon told me to use the benzoin spray when we had a fly in the room some years ago. Worked like a charm, his little wings got gummed up, and he couldn't fly.
I don't even think they make benzoin spray anymore..í ¾í·
person
3 Posts
Keep a can of hairspray in the OR. If you have a flying insect in the OR a quick spray (not over or towards a sterile field even though that would be better than fly germs any day) and the insect will drop to the ground like a rock where you can cover it and dispose of it properly.
Keep a can of hairspray in the OR.
That will go over well when Joint Commission shows up and is surveying to AORN standards, which state no aerosolizing sprays in the OR.
jeroboam
33 Posts
Benzoin spray is indeed still manufactured; you would never use hairspray.