All surgical team members wear scrub attire. Sterile members or 'scrubbed' personnel work directly in the surgical field while the nonsterile members work in the periphery of the sterile surgical field. The surgical team is made up of sterile and nonsterile members.

Scrubbed persons function within a sterile field. The principles of aseptic technique include the following principles. It is the responsibility of each surgical staff member to understand the meaning of these principles and to incorporate them into their everyday practice. The principles of aseptic technique play a vital role in accomplishing the goal of asepsis in the operating room environment. They should be used by institutions to provide direction and information on perioperative practice as they incorporate them into their own policies and procedures.

3 These guidelines are not to be considered policies. The standards and recommended practices, developed by the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), are guidelines to be used by the surgical team to achieve the optimal level of technical and aseptic practice when caring for their patients in the perioperative setting. 1 The surgical team accomplishes this by creating and maintaining the sterile field and by following aseptic principles aimed at preventing microorganisms from contaminating the surgical wound. The goal of asepsis is to prevent the contamination of the open surgical wound by isolating the operative site from the surrounding nonsterile environment. However, operating room activities pertaining to asepsis and aseptic practices have the greatest direct impact upon the surgical team in helping to reduce the patient's risk to surgical site infection.

Some of these activities include patient risk assessment, environmental cleaning, disinfection and sterilization of instrumentation, patient antibiotic prophylaxis, and the use of standard precautions. Preventing surgical site infection in the operating room is the primary goal of the surgical team, and all activities performed by the team support this goal.

Three main principles of asepsis