Ever think of all you can do to optimize your patients' experience and improve their surgical outcomes — before they even step foot into your facility? Here are 5 easy ways...

It's hard to believe that I used to perform spine surgery by moving instruments based on feel, my ability to recall specifics about the patient's anatomy and grainy pictures...

Despite widespread coverage of high-profile outbreaks associated with unsafe injection practices, staff members who use needles and syringes continue to place patients...

How long can an endoscope hang in storage before you have to reprocess it again? There's no definitive answer, but 7 days is the consensus storage interval based on research...

There are so many ways to communicate with staff — emails, phone calls, text messages, snail mail, intercoms, breakroom bulletin boards, you name it — yet none of those...

True safety in the OR isn't about what you report to CMS and the various rating agencies that will grade you for quality. Self-reported safety surveys offer a lot of wiggle room...

In turning away patients who are above a certain BMI, is your cutoff a sliding scale that edges outward as the obesity epidemic worsens? You're hardly alone if what started...

We're all subject to Murphy's Laws of the operating room, like the not-so-funny one that matches the slowest circulator with the fastest surgeon. Here are 25 laws...

An orthopedic attending got the ball rolling for us. "Listen, I believe that we can become the first academic medical center in New York City to implement a same-day hip...

Why do some of our facilities end up with sterile processing leaders who have checked out, frontline staff who have lost their passion and customers in the operating room...

There are roughly 3 million glaucoma sufferers in the United States and most have one thing in common. "They hate the drops," says Steven Sarkisian, MD, a glaucoma surgeon...

It's frustrating, not to mention a waste of valuable time, when central sterile returns incomplete or incorrect instrument sets to the OR. We snapped overhead cellphone pictures...

You can improve the patient experience the old-fashioned way by adding compassion to your bedside manner, but you also should be looking for opportunities to leverage...

We know that pre-operative warming can help prevent hypothermia, which will lead to improved surgical outcomes, fewer surgical site infections, and much happier patients...

Will your infection prevention practices pass inspection with accreditors and state health departments? Keep your facility in compliance by downloading this free checklist...

This micro-sized C-arm, aptly named Micro C, is the first-ever handheld fluoroscopic and digital imaging device. No more maneuvering a large machine around a small extremity...

Let's make it a safe day, LBJ! That's what the charge nurse here at Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston announces to the entire perioperative team at the end of every morning...

Our blood glucose logs include key reminders for our staff. • Check expiration dates. Each day we test a patient, we must test the blood sugar monitor to ensure the strips and solutions have not expired. A box of test strips

How can you expect your recovery room nurses to be on the lookout for pressure injuries when they don’t know what position the patient was in during surgery? A simple...

You'll almost always pay more for premixed, prelabeled syringes prepared at a compounding pharmacy. You're paying not only for the drug, but also for the preparation time...