fly in the OR

Specialties Operating Room

Published

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...

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Specializes in RETIRED Cath Lab/Cardiology/Radiology.

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).

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

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.

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Thanks ! great ideas

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Specializes in retired LTC.

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 ...

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Specializes in Med Surge, Tele, Oncology, Wound Care.

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!

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Specializes in Operating Room.

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·

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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.

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
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.

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Benzoin spray is indeed still manufactured; you would never use hairspray.

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