Reflection on Maintaining a Sterile Field
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To maintain a sterile field, there are a lot of different steps that need to fall into place in order to
ensure a clean environment that poses no threats to the patient. The first important step in this process
is making sure that when opening sterile kits, you open them away from your body and that you don’t
reach over the kits at any point. You also need to make sure that you are opening them by the outside
folds, not the inside, because as soon as the inside is touched by your dirty hands it is no longer sterile.
The second important step in this process is making sure that at no point you turn your back to the
sterile field. If you turn your back, you cannot ensure that nothing unsterile didn’t touch your
supplies. Always make sure that you can see your sterile tools in some way. The third important step is
making sure none of the sterile supplies touch anything outside of the package they were in before they
touch the patient’s body. For example, a sterile wound dressing needs to only come into contact with
the patient's body, nothing else before that. Another example is sterile gloves, which can only touch
sterile items before the procedure is done. Once sterility is broken and the process is over, you simply
discard the gloves. Sterility is so important because it avoids infections such as CLABSI in patients, and
it is our job to make sure that our patients are kept as clean and healthy as possible. Sterility is one of
the most important skills for nurses to understand and be able to adequately practice.