I'm a quality compliance manager at a medical device company. In plain terms, I review products before they reach hospitals—roughly 200 unique items a year, from surgical gloves to wound care dressings. Over the past four years, I've also audited around 300 operating rooms in hospitals of every size.
It took me most of that time (and a few expensive mistakes) to understand something simple: most OR readiness problems are not product problems. They're process problems. The right products in the wrong place, the wrong configuration, or past expiry—that's what I see, again and again.
This checklist is for OR managers, surgical team leads, and procurement people who want a practical way to spot those gaps. Seven items, about thirty minutes per room. No consultants required. Here's what I actually check, and why.
1. Hand Hygiene Infrastructure
Before any surgical glove goes on a hand, that hand has to be properly washed. Sounds obvious, right? But I've walked into ORs where the alcohol rub dispenser was empty, or where the only scrub sink was positioned in a way that made proper technique genuinely awkward.
Why does this matter? Because the best surgical gloves in the world are only as good as what's underneath them. Residue from lotions or previous procedures can compromise glove integrity over time and increase contamination risk.
What I check specifically:
- Alcohol-based hand rubs present at every point of use
- Signage that matches the current hand-hygiene protocol (not outdated posters)
- Sinks with elbow or sensor activation, not hand-operated faucets
This is the step most people skip because it feels too basic. In one hospital in 2023, two ORs had empty hand rub dispensers on a Tuesday morning. Nobody flagged it because nobody owned that check. It's not glamorous. It matters more than almost anything else on this list.
2. Surgical Glove Packaging Integrity
This is where molnlycke surgical gloves come in for us—specifically the Biogel line. But the check I run applies to whatever glove brand you're using.
Here's the thing: most glove failures happen before a glove is even donned. Micro-tears and pinholes are invisible to the naked eye. What you can inspect is the packaging. If the pouch seal looks questionable, if there's moisture inside, or if the outer carton shows signs of compression damage, treat that box as compromised.
In 2022, I implemented a packaging integrity verification protocol at our company. We rejected about 3% of incoming glove batches that year due to seal quality concerns. The gloves themselves weren't necessarily defective—it was that transit and storage conditions had stressed the packaging, which means the gloves inside may have been exposed to conditions they weren't designed for.
So the question I ask every OR manager is simple: when did you last physically inspect your glove storage, not just restock it?
3. Barrier Protection: Drapes and Gowns
Fluid-resistant drapes and gowns don't get the attention they deserve. It's tempting to think any barrier product will do the job. But the AAMI PB70 standard classifies barrier materials into four levels of liquid resistance, and they are absolutely not interchangeable.
What I mean is: a minor procedure with minimal irrigation has completely different fluid exposure than a lengthy operation with heavy irrigation. If you're using a Level 1 drape for a Level 3 case, that drape isn't protecting anyone. It's just there, taking up space.
Mölnlycke's Barrier line handles this well—you can match material performance to procedure type. But regardless of which brand you choose, the right question is: is the barrier level documented in your preference cards? More often than not, I find it isn't. Surgeons assume they're getting a certain level of protection, but nobody has made that explicit.
4. Wound Care Availability
It's surprising how often the dressing ordered for a specific patient isn't stocked in the OR when it's needed. Mölnlycke products like Mepilex and Melgisorb are widely used in hospitals for their respective indications—but they only help if the right product, in the right size, is physically present in the room.
In our Q1 2024 quality audit, we found expired wound care products in 7 of 22 OR storage areas we visited. Some of those dressings were months past their expiry date. Nobody had noticed, because again: the person who checks glove stock doesn't check dressings, and the person who checks dressings doesn't check expiry dates. There was nobody owning the full loop.
My recommendation: assign one person per OR room to own all sterile storage, including expiry audits. Job title doesn't matter. Ownership does.
5. Pulse Oximeter Calibration
This isn't a Mölnlycke product, but I include it because you can't separate the quality of a surgical setup from the reliability of the monitoring equipment. A pulse oximeter that reads SpO₂ accurately is foundational to intraoperative safety.
I consistently find units that haven't been verified against a calibrated reference within the recommended window. Why does this matter? Because SpO₂ readings guide anesthesia decisions. A misreading that's off by a few percent doesn't trigger an alarm; it shows up as subtle drift that nobody notices until something goes wrong.
The fix is honestly simple: a calendar reminder and a ten-minute verification task. That's it. No engineering degree required. But it has to be assigned to someone specific—otherwise it silently drops off everyone's list.
6. Surgical Light Placement
I get asked "what is a surgical light, actually?" more than you'd think. The basics: a surgical light provides shadow-free, color-accurate illumination so the team can see the operative field clearly. But its real value is placement flexibility.
A ceiling-mounted surgical light that can't be positioned correctly because a monitor or gas column is in the way isn't a bad light—it's a bad layout. I've seen ORs where the equipment worked fine in isolation but failed in context because the boom arms couldn't reach the required angle.
(This is one of those checks where the parenthetical matters: room setup can be worse than the equipment. And I'd argue setup is, more often than not, the limiting factor.)
If your team hasn't actually moved the surgical light through its full range of motion in the last year, do it during a non-surgical day. You'll find the issue before it finds you.
7. Infection Control Product Inventory
The label infection control product covers a broad range—antiseptics, disinfectants, sterilization wraps, drapes, surgical gloves, gowns. But most hospitals treat these as separate procurement categories with different owners and different storage locations. That fragmentation is the root cause of most gaps I see.
What I recommend is a quarterly cross-functional inventory review that brings together the OR manager, infection preventionist, and supply chain lead. Sort every infection control product by expiration date, flag anything under 90 days, and set a reorder trigger for each category. This isn't a sophisticated system, and that's the point.
We saw a 34% reduction in expired product write-offs at hospitals that adopted this simple quarterly review. One facility found a full case of sterilization wrap that had been pushed behind a newer pallet—expired by 14 months. It was a $600 loss, but more importantly, it was a patient safety risk that had been sitting there unnoticed.
Costly Mistakes I've Made (So You Don't Have To)
In my first year, I made the classic error: assuming "premium" meant "right for every case." I recommended high-cost dressings for a hospital that didn't have the procedure volume to justify them. It created procurement friction and cost me credibility with their team. I've since learned to match product recommendations to actual usage patterns, not just product capabilities.
I also watched the penny-wise mistake play out first-hand. A hospital saved $0.40 per box by switching to powdered latex gloves. The contact dermatitis consults over the next two quarters erased every cent of that saving—and then some. The cheaper choice looked smart until the downstream costs showed up. Net loss: roughly $11,000 in dermatology referrals, plus two nurses who needed extended time off. Not a trade I'd recommend.
Look, I'm not saying every budget decision is a trap. I'm saying the total cost of a product includes consequences that don't show up on the invoice. Sterility failures, skin reactions, clinician frustration—they all have a cost.
The Bottom Line
You don't need a quality department to run a meaningful OR readiness check. Seven items, thirty minutes per room, and a willingness to actually look at what's in front of you. Start with your highest-volume OR and work from there.
The goal isn't to catch every possible issue on day one. It's to build the habit of looking with intention—because in my experience, most problems in the OR aren't hidden. They're just overlooked.
