No food or drink past midnight is slowly giving way to carbo-loading up to 2 hours before surgery. Fasting past midnight has been an unwritten Ordinance of the OR...

You’ve no doubt heard the trumpet calls of alarm about the dangers of surgical smoke. That the plume wafting off cauterized tissue contains chemicals and...

On the 1st day of Christmas my OR gave to me … PTSD from the Devil incarnate of a scrub tech I had to work with every day. I would call her a witch or a female dog...

The Conduit Interbody Platform from DePuy Synthes is made of bone-mimicking cellular titanium that closely matches the porosity of human bone to facilitate...

Every patient who walks into your facility expects to undergo successful surgery and receive compassionate care. In today’s competitive, consumer-driven healthcare...

Sometimes you need to go old-school to get a key point across to your staff. We recently updated our periarticular injection cocktail as part of a multimodal pain...

In the absence of antibiotic alternatives, physicians in the early 1900s had no choice but to treat every infection with penicillin. Chronic pain went through a similar...

Patients’ friends or family members are often invited to bedsides in pre-op and the PACU, but don’t always have a place to sit as they offer support to their loved ones....

My mission from hospital leadership: Reduce sharps injuries in our 2 regional hospitals by 5% in a year. We far exceeded our goals, managing a 60% reduction from...

A large hospital had so many case carts full of trays backed up during the day they struggled to turn around instrument sets in less than 24 hours. Within 6 months,...

Knee replacement specialists can measure twice and cut once with saws and drills and feel pretty confident that the implants they place will align perfectly with the femur...

One of our staff members noticed that we're always touching our ID badges, and that pre- and post-op staff touch their stethoscopes, and even the time clock to punch...

Our facility’s satisfaction surveys revealed low scores and negative comments in reference to the quality of our communication with patients and their family...

Well, that was a blast. A record number of top surgical leaders from across the country gathered in the Big Easy for 3 days packed with presentations by national experts,...

Kids driving themselves to the OR in motorized cars isn’t new, but creating a road for them to follow and letting them dress up as superheroes on the way...

Surgery can be scary for anyone, but especially so for the littlest of patients. That’s why we provide kids with crayons and surgery-specific coloring books....

Endophthalmitis, an infection involving the entire eye, is a rare complication of invasive procedures such as cataract surgery and intravitreal injections. Post-cataract...

The Oregon Surgical Institute (OSI) is on pace to complete its 500th outpatient joint replacement of the year next month. Patients are ready to head home 6 hours after...

Is Your Facility Disability Friendly? Take steps to ensure disabled patients and staff have comfortable access to every room.

Hope for the Future; Diversity challenges are real, but we can overcome them.