Should facilities screen all patients for Staphylococcus aureus, or just some? Should they decolonize all patients without screening first?...

It’s a battle that never ends: disinfection of the many fixed and mobile surfaces in your ORs after every case, performed as quickly and as thoroughly as possible....

Houston Methodist Hospital experienced a spike in reportable surgical site infections (SSIs) after open abdominal hysterectomies in 2023....

When the wildfires raged in California earlier this year, it wasn’t just firefighters who were concerned about the impact of the smoke....

Trusted associations strongly recommend warming patients throughout the perioperative process and an array of studies highlight the multiple benefits of this...

“Clean in, clean out” is the mantra that acute care teams use to keep staff hands clean and patients safe from transmissible infection. Of course, busy surgical team members...

I love my job. I have always enjoyed educating new ASC leaders and watching them grow professionally....

One weekend each month, all the rooms at Knoxville (Tenn.) Orthopaedic Center are treated with liquid and vaporized isopropyl alcohol, a protocol that serves as an...

Missing instruments. Wrong instruments. Contaminated instruments. Each creates a losing proposition for surgery, from costly delays to frustrated OR staff and surgeons to...

The person at ASCs charged with overseeing practices to prevent surgical site infections (SSIs) usually has another role (or three), so it’s crucial for centers to count on the latest...

Have you checked on the quality of the water that’s coming into and moving around your facility, particularly the water that your sterile processing department (SPD) uses...

Achieving optimal and timely recoveries for total joints patients isn’t easy....

Michelle King, MT(ASCP), MPH, CIC, LTC-CIP, underwent a major surgical event after the birth of her second child....

An inadvertent hypothermic event during surgery can turn a routine procedure into a case with multiple complications....

The safety of patients and staff is an all-encompassing task that falls to the entire OR team throughout the healthcare ecosystem....

It’s one of the most undiscussed and unstudied phenomena in surgery, dating back to the very first operations on patients: the presence of insects in the OR and the...

Let’s face it, double-gloving isn’t cheap — especially if you’re using a two-glove system with built-in color indicators....

A study recently published in the American Journal of Infection Control, “Right-sizing Expectations for Hand Hygiene Observation Collection”, argues that hand hygiene...

When you give staff the power and the freedom to not only bring fresh ideas to the table, but also to weave those ideas into the day-to-day workflow, great things can...

Studies show that up to 30% of the population may be colonized with Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in their nares and up to 5% of U.S. hospital patients are also...