Product development
You are given the task to develop clothes to be used in a surgical theatre by staff who will be in direct contact with patients.
- Define the product, or if you so wish; set of products. What is the intended use? What tasks should they fulfil?
Surgical garments should provide the surgical staff shelter, comfort (thermal, smoothness and mobility), they should be an efficient barrier to contaminants without transferring microbiological species, releasing wear debris or other particles to the patient. The garments are not intended for patients.
- What requirements should the product/set of products fulfil to fit with the product definition? Make sure your requirements are quantitative and verifiable. What test methods are suitable for verification?
In order to give shelter, the garments should be thick and dense enough to be non-transparent – this may be tested. Also the barrier properties as well as the smoothness and mobility are linked to the thickness, denseness and pliability. The garments should come in a range of sizes to fit staff.
Comfort properties may be tested by a Kawabata system or experienced by a test panel – potentially a combination of the two.
Wear and debris generation can be assessed by Martindale testing – ISO 12945-2:2000.
To avoid disease transfer from fabric to patient the garments must stand at least 70°C with a shrinking limit – e.g. ISO 3759:2011 is applicable.
The garments should have neutral colours with good colour fastness where stains become visible but not extra obvious – applicable colour fastness standard method.
Eventually, when investigated further the requirements should materialize into a requirement specification where each requirement has a testing method and release limits.
- Come up with a draft for a prototype design that is in line with steps 1 and 2.
Pairs of trousers and shirts in a range of sizes to fit all staff and genders.
They are both based on polyester/Lyocell staple fibre yarn twill weaves of about 200 g/m2 area weight.
Trousers should have drawstring round the waist and cuffs at the leg endings to accommodate skin, hair and other organic debris.
The shirts should have short sleeves both to facilitate individual fit, to minimize wear between the lower arm and sleeve and to enable disinfection of the lower arms. It should be collarless, round neck and long enough to overlap the waist drawstring with a good margin.
Neither trousers nor shirts should have pockets where potentially contaminated or other hazardous objects such as cell phones or keys can be kept.
Garments should be turquois or similar light blue colour since it the most popular colour that signals freshness and cleanness.
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Project
Contact
This resource was developed as part of an Erasmus+ project, funded with support from the European Commission under grant agreement 2016-1-SE01-KA203-22064.
The project was a collaboration between:
- The University of Borås, Sweden
- The University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland
- The University of Alcalá, Spain
- Digital Connections, Scotland
This resource has been released under Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA 4.0.
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If you would like more information on this resource please contact:
- Academic content – The University of Boras (www.hb.se)
- Technical resource development – The University of the Highlands and Islands Educational Development Unit - EDU (edu@uhi.ac.uk)
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