Assessing Surgical Fire Risk – New Flyers and Posters Release
Every staff member in an operating room is responsible for certain aspects of fire safety, and everyone should know evacuation protocols, be aware of the location and type of fire extinguishers, and participate in the time out.
Additional fire safety responsibilities rest primarily on the circulating nurse and the anesthesia providers. As part of Jackson Medical’s free Fire Safety Toolkit, this informative and reusable poster called “Assessing Fire Risk and Taking Proper Precautions” shows the responsibilities for relevant OR staff members under different fire risk assessments. Your fire risk assessment can be enhanced using another free resource highlighted in a previous blog post.
Fire risk is generally broken down into a level 1, 2, or 3, representing Low, Low Risk Potential to Become High Risk, and High Risk, respectively. These different levels of risk require different precautions, and this poster can be checked off for each case to ensure that the proper steps are taken, and then erased and reused.
This toolkit was built on guidelines, recommendations, and requirements from organizations such as AORN, the Joint Commission, NFPA, and the FDA. This is another checklist that will help OR staff assess fire risks and appropriately classify the fire risk level so that the appropriate precautions will be taken.
Checklists, which were originally created by the aerospace industry, are an incredibly powerful tool to ensure compliance with evidence-based protocols. The first step on this checklist is to verify the fire triangle. A commonly overlooked point of the fire triangle in the OR is an ignition source – the fiber-optic light cables used in minimally invasive surgeries can reach temperatures exceeding 500℉ and serve as an ignition source. Jackson Medical’s GloShield insulates the surrounding environment from the tips of fiber-optic light cables. In this way, GloShield effectively separates the “ignition source” side of the fire triangle from the others, thus preventing a fire from starting. The posters in this toolkit can be customized to suit the needs of your facility. Contact Jackson Medical and the GloShield team for additional details, support, and to discuss how GloShield can enhance your facility’s fire safety.