The 2026 edition includes 36 Guidelines with critical revisions you need for patient safety and to stay survey-ready.
Align your patient safety practices, policies, and education with the current evidence-based guidelines. Includes last year’s major updates, featuring the new ERAS guideline.
"The AORN Guidelines are essential…in developing and supporting policy and procedures, competency, practice changes, and nursing and organizational leadership."
"We use the book to help us set policy, procedure and influence surgeons and governing boards…[and for] continuing education and education of new nurses."
"AORN Guidelines …are updated when new evidence emerges. Using the AORN Guidelines to form policies and procedures is the best way to ensure safe perioperative practice."
The Guidelines give you a single, evidence‑based foundation to update policies, align staff and committees, close safety gaps, and establish clear competencies, education pathways, and audits—supporting consistent, high‑reliability perioperative care.
The Guidelines serve as your trusted source of truth every day—supporting foundational practices in perioperative practice including sterile technique, safe patient positioning/prevention of pressure injury, surgical energy use, skin prep, sterilization, environmental cleaning, the prevention of retained surgical items and so much more that reduces risk of avoidable harm.
The Guidelines translate research into practice and support you by keeping onboarding, annual competencies, checklists, and workflows aligned with current evidence—supporting safer care, fewer errors, and stronger perioperative team performance.
The Guidelines support evidence-based standardization across the perioperative continuum—reducing variation and rework—and supporting effective team dynamics, all while improving patient safety, operational efficiency, and survey readiness.
The Guidelines align perioperative‑specific infection prevention strategies—PPE use, patient placement, and emerging pathogen preparedness—so evidence‑based precautions are consistently applied in high‑stakes environments.
The Guidelines provide current evidence for instrument cleaning, packaging, monitoring, sterilization, and sterilization verification—supporting a defensible, reliable sterile processing systems that protect patients before the first incision.
The Guidelines extend perioperative consistency beyond the OR—supporting sterile technique in invasive settings, radiation safety for interventional procedures, and processing practices designed to prevent infection across all procedural locations.
The Guidelines support development of evidence‑based preceptor resources that strengthen clinical skills, reinforce safe practice, and help new perioperative nurses transition successfully into complex clinical environments.
The Guidelines are the evidence base behind onboarding programs like Periop 101, giving learners a consistent foundation in perioperative safety principles they’ll see every day in practice.
Pick Your Format—available in print book or eBook. Purchase via credit card by ordering through the AORN store. Purchase via facility purchase order by following the instructions on the Facility Order Forms