In this article we are going to be talking about the do's and don'ts of the operating room.

For a lot of people in the operating room is a very foreign place isn't a place that not everyone gets the opportunity to go to. Fortunately for medical students, you do rotations in med school, where you get to rotate, you'd have to do a surgery rotation to graduate some PA school students. Some nursing students may get the opportunity. Maybe some nurse practitioner students depending on your rotations but not everyone gets the opportunity to go into the operating room. So, Below is the Dr. Webb here going to be talking about the do's and don'ts of the operating room.

The operating room can be very frightening for a lot of people. Some people were very intimidated and get lightheaded or faint, do things when they see blood in the operating room especially on a trauma rotation. Where patient with gunshot wounds were going through their belly, you know we're fixing a broken bone with the leg is hanging off to the side of the bed. There's blood like everywhere. I remember lots of cases and residency where I left the operating room and had blood all over both of my legs all over my face masks.

It can be a very dirty place sometimes, but a few things for you guys number one, you have to depending on the hospital you have to wear certain scrubs sets or certain uniform so check with your hospital and see hey, what is the color scrubs that I should wear? There are certain professions where certain colors at different hospitals and my hospital in residency in San Antonio. The doctors were one color that nurses water before one color the technicians were another color so you can tell who's who.

Another thing is you have to make sure that your hair is able to fit and one of the surgical caps so if you have long braids or really big, puffy, puffy hair, you may want to do something with your hair,so they can fit into one of the surgical caps.

The next thing is just know that everything that is blue in the operating room is sterile. Do not touch anything that's blue. Do not bump into it. Do not try to, you know grab something off of it. Do not try to cross over it. Don't do that.

The surgical technicians are very particular about their operating room and sterility. They will call you out. It's almost kind of frightening. They will yell at you if you touch any of their stuff. Do not touch anything blue. Because if you touch something blue, everything is sterile. We have to get new instruments and new trays. So it just eliminates or also it makes us late for a case if we don't have an instrument, no other particular instruments for that particular surgery in the room at that time. We can't do the surgery. We've got to tell the patient to cancel the surgery.

The second thing is when you're gowning, we wear a surgical gowns in the operating room. Make sure that the your senior person gowns first so if I'm walking into the operating room with my staff always let him go first. It's a sign of courtesy sign of respect.

The same thing when scrubbing your hands, never put my hands below my waist because that's not a sterile area. And never touch anything after you scrub your hands. When you're scrubbing your hands with the surgeon or with your resident or with your surgical tech always, always scrub the same amount of time as that other person.

So another thing is if you have nice shoes and you don't want them to get dirty, do not wear and there's also some blue covers that can go over the shoes, but any shoes that you do not want to get dirty blood, body fluids, everything else do not wear in the operating room. Certain places have certain restrictions on what shoes you can wear. I was in Thailand and the hospital and the people in the hospitals. They wore clogs with no socks. Everyone in the hospital worklogs with no socks and I don't know the real reasoning behind this. But I had to try it as well. It was freaking weird to get blood splatter on your feet I guess and you just wipe it off. So depending on your hospital policy protocols, just check with your local hospital and see what is the norm for that area.

If the surgery is going to be involving X rays or radiology is make sure you have some lead as a lead best there's a thyroid shield is well to protect you from X rays. And if you're going to be close to the operating room table, just make sure that you wear a mask. So the mask with a face shield because you don't want to be standing off in the corner, a piece of bone that goes into your face or your eye or something that happens in especially in orthopedics where we're using the saw we're using a drill hammer, things fly all across the room, so make sure you wear a face mask over your face. Those are my big do's and don'ts.