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...

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?...

My orthopedic patients are often groggy from the effects of anesthesia when I meet with them minutes after surgery to let them know how the procedure went and what...

It costs the Graystone Eye Surgery Center in Hickory, N.C., $1.05 to warm a patient. A loaner linen service charges $1 to clean a blanket, and the cost of using the...

Children at Roxana Cannon Arsht Surgicenter in Wilmington, Del., were so stressed saying goodbye to their parents before heading to the operating room for dental...

This interactive vending machine houses, tracks and dispenses Xenco Medical’s sterile-packaged spinal instruments and implants. The Wi-Fi-enabled machine uses an advanced...

Certain procedures cause anxiety for patients. That’s especially true at my facility, where we’re treating children. When we received a $13,000 grant for 3 virtual reality...

It’s one thing to log and track laboratory specimens and post their results in the patient’s chart. But that doesn’t confirm that the ordering healthcare provider read...

When Outpatient Surgery Magazine invited me to walk the exhibit hall at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) Annual Meeting in San Diego,...

Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists. Baby Boomers are tech-illiterate dinosaurs too set in their ways to learn anything new. These tired stereotypes are not only patently...

It sounds almost too good to be true: a credit card without interest for medical expenses. But if you're losing out on potential patients who can't afford skyrocketing...

In the early morning hours of Sept. 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into the southeast coast of Puerto Rico and tracked across the island with maximum sustained...

We hang an image of the American flag on the OR door to alert the surgical team that the patient is a combat veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder...

There are nurses, and then there are operating room nurses, those masked crusaders infused with a special blend of smarts, savvy and strength to stand up for patients...

Until they get cited in an inspection, most sterile processing departments are forced to cut corners and take shortcuts. My job is to arrive on the scene in advance of...

Having music playing in a surgical facility can make patients more comfortable. As a nurse who’s also a Julliard-trained violinist, I’ve taken it a step further by performing...

What do you see in this photograph: surgical smoke, right? This photo accompanied an article in last month’s issue about mandatory smoke evacuation legislation....

You might consider pressure injuries "out of sight, out of mind," or "not our problem." After all, you have no way of knowing you sent a patient home with a bed...

Besides the occasional complaint about incomplete sets or late-arriving trays, how can an OR manager grade the sterile processing department’s performance? We’ve got you...