LAUSR

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced institutions to change theatre systems in an attempt to protect staff and patients from COVID-19 infection. The Intensive Care Medicine/ Anaesthesia COVID-19 group [1] and Public Health England [2] have produced guidelines which our institution used to inform local protocol for the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), conduct of anaesthesia and the movement of patients, staff and equipment into and out of theatre. We used in-situ simulation with UV fluorescent powder (Glo Germ Company, Moab, UT, USA) to ascertain how effective these systems are in reducing the spread of contamination, from a patient with COVID-19 to staff, equipment and the environment within the theatre complex. This has given us insight into the effectiveness of our processes and highlighted areas which need additional decontamination measures. We believe that the findings from our simulation would be applicable to any institution where such patients are brought to theatre. The simulation used a SimMan 3G (Laerdal Medical Ltd., Orpington, UK) wearing a patient gown, brought to theatre on a trolley with standard linen. The patient and trolley were seeded with Glo Germ to simulate contamination due to coughing, consistent with known distances for droplet spread [3]. The patient was moved into the theatre and