By the Book
This hospital policy outlines procedures to ensure that surgical instruments, sponges, and other items are accounted for before closing a surgical site, preventing harm to patients.
What is the Prevention of Retained Items Policy
This AORN standard provides evidence-based steps for preparing, handling, and maintaining sterility of gowns, gloves, and sterile fields during surgery.
What is AORN Guideline for Sterile Technique in the OR?
This standard specifically addresses the safe use of Class 3B and Class 4 lasers in medical settings, covering hazard zones, signage, and responsibilities of Laser Safety Officers.
What is ANZI Standard for Safe Use of Lasers in Healthcare?
This rule ensures the correct patient, drug, dose, route and time when administering medications.
What are the Five Rights of Medication Administration?
This practice involves cleaning hands before and after patient contact to prevent the spread of germs.
What is Hand Hygiene?
This policy requires the verification of patient identity using two identifiers before any procedure.
What is the Patient Identification Policy?
This practice includes using validated tools (like ELPO or Munro Scale) and placing patients on pressure-redistributing surfaces to minimize risk during surgery.
What is the AORN Guideline for Pressure Injury Reduction?
This safety protocol in the operating room focuses on preventing ignition by controlling three elements: fuel sources, oxidizers, and ignition devices.
What is the Fire Safety Triangle or Fire Safety Protocol?
This term refers to a detailed review of an adverse event to prevent recurrence.
What is a Root Cause Analysis?
This requirement ensures that all facial hair is completely covered in the operating room to maintain a sterile environment and prevent contamination.
What is wearing a beard cover as part of surgical attire?
This mandatory pause before surgery verifies the correct patient, procedure, and site to prevent errors.
What is the Universal Protocol Policy or Surgical Timeout?
This guideline mandates covering facial hair in both the operating room and sterile processing areas to reduce microbial shedding.
What is the AORN Guideline for Surgical Attire (Head and Beard Covers)?
These roles—often specified by ANSI Z136.3—involve oversight of a laser safety program, staff training, and conducting audits of medical laser use.
What are responsibilities of the Laser Safety Officer (LSO) and Laser Safety Committee?
This indicator tracks the rate of inpatient falls resulting in harm, helping hospitals monitor and improve safety practices for vulnerable patients.
What is the Patient Safety Indicator for Falls?
This policy ensures that all surgical instruments are properly cleaned, sterilized, and inspected before use to prevent infection and maintain patient safety.
What is Point of Use Instrumentation Policy?
This policy requires wearing specific garments, such as scrubs, masks, and hair coverings, to maintain a sterile environment in the operating room.
What is Surgical Attire?
According to AORN guidelines, positioning an obese patient during surgery involves using a systems approach that includes preoperative planning, specialized equipment (like bariatric-capacity OR tables), proper padding of pressure areas, and team-based safe handling to reduce injury risk.
What is the AORN guideline for positioning obese patients?
According to ANSI Z136 standards, this term refers to the space within which the level of direct, reflected, or scattered laser radiation exceeds the maximum permissible exposure.
What is the Nominal Hazard Zone (NHZ)?
This organization sets annual National Patient Safety Goals—addressing issues like patient identification, infection control, and surgical accuracy—and investigates serious adverse events known as sentinel events.
What is The Joint Commission?
This ventilation system in the operating room uses a unidirectional flow of filtered air to reduce airborne contamination during procedures.
What is Laminar Airflow?
In July 2025, North Carolina became the 19th state to pass a law requiring surgical facilities to use this system to filter and evacuate surgical smoke during procedures.
What is a smoke evacuation system? or Smoke Evacuation Policy
This gold-standard document from AORN outlines evidence-based, 36 perioperative guidelines—covering everything from transmission-based precautions to instrument cleaning and safe use of surgical energy devices—to ensure patient and workplace safety.
What is AORN’s Guidelines for Perioperative Practice (Perioperative Standard of Practice)?
According to AORN guidelines, these instruments are recommended for laser procedures because they reduce the risk of beam reflection and accidental tissue injury.
What are nonreflective surgical instruments?
One of the most frequently reported sentinel events involves this type of patient injury, often linked to inadequate fall prevention measures
What is a patient fall resulting in serious harm?
This type of healthcare-associated infection occurs when a urinary catheter remains in place too long or is not managed properly, and prevention strategies include aseptic insertion, daily necessity review, and timely removal.
What is CAUTI (Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection)?