Coming clean: the symbolic use of clinical hygiene in a hospital sterilising unit

Abstract

The hospital Theatre Sterile Supplies Unit cleans and provides sterile instruments for use in operating theatres. The strict standards of cleanliness, based on scientific notions of clinical hygiene, are maintained at the everyday level by people such as ancillary workers, nurses and doctors organising their activities, movements and understandings according to known rules. Since clinical hygiene is related to advanced microbiological discoveries, an instrument cannot be judged sterile by the naked eye. The judgement is made on the basis of what is believed to be happening to the instrument (e.g. processes it goes through; places it has been). The paper, based on an empirical study, notes the conceptual relationship between primitive and western notions of hygiene, and examines the ways that rules are used in the everyday accomplishment of instrument sterilisation. Copyright © 1989, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved