Risk assessments offer good foundation for OR extinguisher choice

When it comes to which type of fire extinguisher to use in the OR, your best bet is to back up your choice with a risk assessment (but of course).

I think the key tipping point in presenting a properly conducted risk assessment is to make sure that each possible intervention gets a good “airing” during the process.

For example, you could create a simple comparison of those OR fire protection strategies you have identified as the final possibilities (basically a pro/con matrix, such as between CO2 and water-mist extinguishers, for example).

Make sure that you give full play to industry information, such as that available from the ECRI Institute, Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), and your state department of health. Googling “surgical fire prevention” will provide you with links to most of the AORN and ECRI information.

You want to document thoughtful analysis of the conditions involved, the inherent risks in those conditions, and a determination of how you’d determine that the risks have been minimized. Also make sure that you’ve considered other areas with surgical fire risks — C-sections, endoscopies, etc.

Also, I’ve found a great deal of risk assessment information on the University of Leeds Web site. It may because I am rather an Anglophile, but I find the information on the site very clear and useful (two of my favorite qualities when it comes to information).