If your ears begin to feel the pinch from wearing masks all day as you return work during the coronavirus outbreak, reach for a Barrel of Monkeys. It's one of the many...

I’m known for crafting surgical caps made of bright colorful fabric and giving them to my colleagues as small gestures of how much I appreciate working with them....

The battle for control of the thermostat is a common occurrence in ORs and a source of undo stress for the surgical team. We decided to give final say of the room's...

Effectively screening patients for COVID-19 is part of pre-op protocols as outpatient facilities across the country slowly begin performing elective procedures again....

Even if your facility isn’t on the frontlines of the battle to combat COVID-19, you can still find ways to join in and help. For our temporarily shuttered surgery center, that meant...

I In our endoscopy department, we make a MESSSS first thing in the morning. The acronym, which we discovered through SGNA, makes it easy to remember the agenda...

Members of our surgical team were particularly grossed out about wearing thyroid shields others had worn during procedures involving intraoperative imaging....

Healthcare professionals don't do well sitting still. If your staff is faced with too much free time during the COVID-19 crisis, look for non-clinical tasks that need to be done...

If a survey uncovers an issue that will take a lot of effort (time and money) to solve, always ask the surveyor if there’s an easier way to make the fix and still be...

A one-word sign on a fleet of fluid waste management carts lets your OR team know which devices have been emptied and cleaned and which ones haven’t. After we...

When the coronavirus outbreak caused a shortage of personal protective equipment at our hospital, we jumped at the chance to help and developed the prototype for a DIY...

Reprocessing technicians have one of the most important jobs in an endoscopy center. The complicated and detailed task of cleaning and reprocessing multiple scopes...

High-volume surgery centers need to take advantage of any operational enhancements they can to stay ahead of the game. That's why we've become proactive about IV starts...

It’s been nearly two months since the coronavirus began to invade every facet of our day-to-day lives. Heck, it virtually shut down our very livelihood when elective...

In addition to marking the correct surgery site, we always place patients' ID and allergy wristbands on the side thier surgeries will be performed. It's a simple safety check that...

Our PACU staff used to ask that question a lot because we didn't have a designated place to put them. When patients handed over their glasses in pre-op, we'd affix...

We use a free game app (kahoot.com) to turn ho-hum staff meetings into fun, interactive learning sessions. It's easy to input a series of multiple choice or true-false...

Patient satisfaction surveys and comments from providers trying to communicate with patients indicated that the ambient noise in our small pre/post-operative area was...

I love to sketch and draw in my free time, so during pre-op clinic visits I ask patients what kind of drawing they want me to make on the bandages I'll place over their scars...

When surveyors come knocking, the worst thing you can do is keep them waiting while you scramble around searching to find the documents they asked to see. That's why...