The long, narrow lumens of flexible endoscopes can make reprocessing the delicate instruments feel like an exercise in futility. But despite the inherent challenges...

It should come as no surprise that most outpatient facilities warm their surgical patients. After all, there's an ever-growing mountain of evidence that says warming...

You can buy all the 4K surgical monitors you want, but unless you have a 4K surgical camera feeding them images, along with a 4K-capable camera control unit and...

It’s not uncommon for staff members in one department to believe they do more or matter more than their colleagues who work in other areas of the facility....

When it comes to keeping patients happy when their case start times are delayed, clear and consistent communication is key. That’s easier said than done. Nurses are always...

Looking for a more efficient way to put your OR team’s suggestions into day-to-day practice? First, make it easy for staff to share their process improvement ideas....

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...

Near the end of the day, 6 recovery room nurses were standing around the PACU desk chatting it up. Not one of them was doing chart reviews or making follow-up calls...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci robot, which sells for $1.5 to $2 million and costs about $300,000 a year to maintain, continues to dominate abdominal robotic surgery....

Our surgery center doesn’t have a cafeteria, so family members who were waiting for their loved ones in surgery used to leave if they wanted a quick bite to eat. When surgeons...

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...

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,...