Final answer:
By maintaining sterility of surgical instruments, the surgical unit, and hands, the surgical team ensures a sterile field, crucial for preventing postsurgical infections and ensuring patient safety.
Step-by-step explanation:
By keeping the surgical instruments, surgical unit, and gloved hands sterile, the members of the surgical team are maintaining a sterile field. In healthcare, maintaining a sterile field is paramount to prevent contamination during surgical procedures. Handwashing is a critical component of this practice, and for health-care workers, it is required not just after potential contamination but also in between patient contacts. This level of hygiene is necessary to prevent the spread of microbes and infectious agents. Surgical scrubbing is an intensive process specifically designed to reduce microbes on the skin to prevent them from entering surgical wounds.
The concept of asepsis or aseptic technique is all about creating and maintaining an environment that is free from all living microorganisms, which could otherwise cause infection, potentially leading to sepsis. This condition involves a serious systemic inflammatory response that can lead to shock and even death. Hence, surgical procedures, which have a high risk of contamination, should only be carried out within a sterile field to mitigate such risks. Hospital protocols also include using sterilized materials and strict procedures for the applications of sterilants. Joseph Lister's historical contribution to surgical practices, using carbolic acid as a disinfectant, demonstrates the long-standing recognition of the necessity for aseptic techniques.