Fighting the Incivility War; Teaching and requiring respectful behavior improve staff morale, patient safety and the bottom line.

The surgical nurse had a substance use disorder, went to rehab for treatment and was in long-term recovery. All seemed well, but she was surrounded by temptation...

Make Your Facility More Inclusive; Tips to help you navigate the landscape of sexual orientation and gender identification.

Next Steps; If you're committed to becoming more diverse and inclusive, here are a few places to get help.

Administering medications in the OR is wrought with challenges thanks to the patient's rapidly changing condition and constant distractions occurring in a fast-paced,...

Patient-centered care is one of surgery's hottest buzzwords for a reason. The patients who walk into your facility expect excellent surgical care. That much is a given....

What's not to like about 4K ultra-high-definition surgical monitors? At 4 times the resolution of high definition, the picture quality is out of this world. If you're thinking...

My recent study showed that music can be just as effective as midazolam in calming patients' nerves before they receive peripheral nerve blocks. Based on those...

If you want your staff to relay safety concerns to you, you need to make it easy for them to report what they see. No one's going to fill out long, detailed forms....

When we experienced an uncharacteristic increase in SSIs starting in August 2018 — 9 infections over the next 6 months — we assumed the spike was related to opening...

For Mandy Pate, RN, CBN, everything about the sleeve gastrectomy was familiar. She knew every square inch of the operating room at the University of Michigan...

Medication errors are all too frequent in the OR. A recent observational study identified an error in 5.3% of all anesthesia medication administrations — roughly 1 of every 20...

Are your facility's venous thromboembolism (VTE) rates higher than the national standard of 3.72 events per 1,000 patient discharges? In 2016, our VTE rate rose...

The Joint Commission and the National Fire Protection Association guidelines say flammable preps must be allowed enough time to dry after application, pooled solution...

How long has it been since you last heard about the importance of limiting the use of opioids to manage post-op pain. A few months since your last national...

You can keep your office door open or your ear to the ground and still not be tuned in to what your staff really thinks. Our "You Said, We Did" form solves that issue....

You can scrub every inch of an OR until your elbows ache, but the minute someone steps into that clean space the air becomes contaminated simply because of...

Healthcare facilities continue to face challenges in performing safe and effective endoscope reprocessing. Is it any wonder? The complex design of endoscopes makes...

We're sticklers about ensuring staff wash or sanitize their hands before and after each patient contact. We use a secret code word, "Mango," to inform forgetful or...

The workplace environment at our surgery center is healthy and morale is high. We have regular pot luck dinners and wear T-shirts designed by the daughter of one of...