This is a story I picked up out of medical news today.com and it is a story from a June issue of Anesthesia and Analgesia magazine and it’s the journal of the international anesthesia research society.
Apparently, a nurse sustained an electrical injury during an operation and this was a problem. They want to look at changing the electrical codes that are used in operating room equipment because of the injuries, because they are wet environments and obviously when we have a body open to surgical procedure there are fluid available and not just water but fluids that are really good at conducting electricity because of the salts dissolved in there. So we need to have safer procedures for nurses and other members of the teams operating on patients.
This particular situation occurred during a routine operation. The nurse was asked to plug in a piece of equipment and there was water spilled on the floor in the OR that had been used for the irrigation equipment in this particular procedure. She was kneeling on the floor, had the hand on the plug and ended up giving herself quite a shock when plugging in the operating room- plugging in the piece of equipment during this procedure. It caused her to be knocked backward and suffered a ruptured eardrum and missed 2 weeks of work as result of this injury. So not a minor injury, not just a little jolt or a little tingle but certainly a significant injury and there needs to be some safety changes to this as we use more and more electrical equipment.
Once upon a time in an operating theatre, a lot of the equipment was hand operated and was manual use equipment but more and more often, we are using more and more high tech equipment and high tech equipment needs electricity. So certainly, this is something that is increasing the safety of all members of the healthcare team in operating room setting but I think that there is some definite need to change the way that the electrical equipment is put in place in operating rooms and the electrical code should be adjusted appropriately. You can find more links on this in the shownotes and again that’s from Anesthesia and Analgesia journal from the June issue if you want to look that up for yourself.
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This article has been featured in the news segment of the Nursing Show podcast episode Drowning, Near Drowning Emergencies and Episode 136
