IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v45y1997i5p649-657.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Space, sterility and surgery: Circuits of hygiene in the operating theatre

Author

Listed:
  • Fox, Nick J.

Abstract

The spaces of the surgical operating theatre (ST) and associated built environment are analysed, to explore what the physical layout means for the interactions which take place. Three "circuits of hygiene" of surgical staff, surgical instruments, and patients are documented, and analysis of these physical movements through the surgical spaces examined for their contribution to sterility. It is concluded that the built environment of the ST contributes reminders to staff to fulfil the necessary procedures of aseptic technique, to ensure the safe passage of the patient through surgery into a condition where s/he may be designated as "healed".

Suggested Citation

  • Fox, Nick J., 1997. "Space, sterility and surgery: Circuits of hygiene in the operating theatre," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(5), pages 649-657, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:45:y:1997:i:5:p:649-657
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(96)00381-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Melo, Sara, 2018. "The role of place on healthcare quality improvement: A qualitative case study of a teaching hospital," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 136-142.
    2. Abeysinghe, Sudeepa & Leppold, Claire & Ozaki, Akihiko & Morita, Mariko & Tsubokura, Masaharu, 2017. "Disappearing everyday materials: The displacement of medical resources following disaster in Fukushima, Japan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 117-124.
    3. Glenda Riley, Robin & Manias, Elizabeth, 2006. "Governance in operating room nursing: Nurses' knowledge of individual surgeons," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(6), pages 1541-1551, March.
    4. Elif Özcan & Cornelis L. H. Broekmeulen & Zoe Alexandra Luck & Monique van Velzen & Pieter Jan Stappers & Judy Reed Edworthy, 2022. "Acoustic Biotopes, Listeners and Sound-Induced Action: A Case Study of Operating Rooms," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(24), pages 1-23, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    surgery sterility hygiene;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:45:y:1997:i:5:p:649-657. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.