Book I: Health establishments

The general organisation, staff, equipment and all services of a surgical clinic must be adapted to the maximum number of patients that can normally be admitted and operated on. Any new facility must have a minimum of fifteen beds. However, in the case of establishments specialising in treatments generally requiring only short-term hospitalisation, the number of beds may be fewer but not less than four.

Each surgical nursing home must have at least : 1° An aseptic operating room with, attached to it, a surgeon’s preparation room and, if necessary, an anaesthesia room; 2° A septic operating room in which dressings and plasters can be applied. The septic room is separate from the aseptic block; 3° A radiology facility.

Operating theatres must be set up in such a way that they can be used at night as well as during the day. Emergency lighting must be provided in the event of a power failure. They must be heated and ventilated. Back-up or emergency heating must be provided to ensure that a sufficient temperature is reached quickly and in all seasons. The equipment in the operating theatre must include in…

The establishment must have an oxygen supply.

Communications between operating theatres and hospital rooms must always be under cover and never take place in poorly sheltered corridors or in the open air. It must always be possible to transport a patient lying down from the operating theatre to his or her room, if these premises are on different floors, by a freight lift.

Any establishment with multi-bedded rooms must have at least two single rooms per twenty beds or fraction thereof.

Throughout the day, there should never be less than one care worker for every five beds.

Regularly updated records of visits and prescriptions are kept, as well as medical observations for each patient. An operating protocol is drawn up after each surgical operation.