On those rare occasions when a patient contracts a surgical site infection, we want to preserve as much evidence in the case as possible so we'll be better able to find...

Flexible endoscopes are notoriously difficult to clean, putting unsuspecting patients at risk of being exposed to infections by unsuspecting physicians. After a serious flexible...

Baptist Hospital in Miami, Fla., this year’s winner of the 2019 OR Excellence Award for Employee Safety, is well on its way to clearing the OR air of surgical smoke thanks...

If your surgeons have too few or too many of the instruments and supplies they need for a case, your preference cards are inaccurate and outdated. It's too few if your...

When I'm Queen of the World, new-job orientation will be department-specific. I don't know a thing about ICU or ER, nor do I need to, yet I just endured an incredibly,,,

How will you protect your staff if there's an active shooter in your facility? We've trained our staff using the FBI-endorsed Run, Hide, Fight protocol. If staff can't safely evacuate...

There's a universe of surgical monitors out there of varying sizes, features and functionality. Where do you start in evaluating your options? As a healthcare equipment...

At our ASC, 15% to 20% of our patients speak Spanish as their primary language. For many years, we've partnered with East Tennessee State University's (ETSU) Language...

Benjamin Franklin was right: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Pretty sure Mr. Franklin wasn’t talking about caring for surgical instruments, but we do...

There were boxes of suture hiding everywhere at AdventHealth Surgery Center Lenexa (Kan.), some opened and some outdated, some stored on the big suture cart...

Before critical procedures like our high-volume thyroidectomies, we gather a multidisciplinary team to play a game of "What Could Go Wrong?" in which we discuss...

We've shaved some precious minutes off our turnover times by creating a "runner" position to help the RN, surgical tech and the 1 to 2 instrument techs we staff for each...

Two words that strike fear in the heart of every OR manager: open time. That, of course, is when your ORs sit silent and empty while it's standing-room only in the staff...

The winner of this year's OR Excellence Award for Patient Satisfaction goes to great lengths to get patients to fill out their post-op surveys and even greater lengths to...

Lasers are powering numerous procedures at eye surgery centers — cataracts, glaucoma, astigmatism, cornea and retina among them — with more on the way....

The patient is prepped and draped, and I'm seated to begin my charting. Only then do I realize that I've forgotten to record the serial number of the SCD box. I'd have to hop...

The OR team at Lakeside Surgery Center in Omaha, Neb., works hard to manage patients’ post-op pain with an eye toward the addiction epidemic. “Our nation is in...

We're thrilled to introduce this year's OR Excellence Award Winners, a group of surgical leaders who represent facilities excelling at performing safe, environmentally friendly...

Has your OR staff lost its way when it comes to pretreating instruments at the point of use before sending them out for reprocessing? Have they never even known the way?...

However wonderful it might (or might not) be for healthcare pricing to be transparent, what does it matter if you have no clear understanding of related costing and other...