Whenever I get up in the morning before a long shift, I need to check the weather forecast....

Most surgical cases were done open or laparoscopically back then. No emergent, complex or urgent case was performed in a minimally invasive fashion....

April flooding brought May flowers to sunny California, where I’m on assignment....

I’ve been in the infection prevention program here at UnityPoint Health - Meriter for about 12 years, where I split my time between doing disease...

The infection preventionist epitomizes the concept of on-the-job training. There’s no university degree that solely prepares you for a...

As a child I loved games. These tests of wit, luck and athletic ability taught me everything I needed to know about winning, losing and life....

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has....”

Tell us how long you’ve been in your current position and what your job entails. I’ve been in my current position for 28 years. My responsibilities include design...

Soon after I started my career in the OR 42 38 (!) years ago, the first Universal Law of OR Nursing grabbed me by my scrub jacket and shook me into a higher state of consciousness....

Construction of any medical facility — a large hospital or a small ambulatory surgery center (ASC) — has one foundational goal: to effectively...

What has changed is the steady growth in awareness among patients and payers about surgery centers and the reliable patient care and positive outcomes they deliver. What hasn’t changed, unfortunately, is the need for...

Ten years ago, I walked into a meeting with my current business partner, and he listed a handful of goals on a single eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch sheet of paper. A decade later, we’ve achieved all of those original goals....

Every profession has its own secret language, but it’s safe to say our workplace jargon is in a class of its own. We have a storied history of mnemonics, acronyms and devices to recall information on a dime....

For the past decade, I’ve written my column on resolutions I planned to make in the New Year, the many well-intentioned goals I can never seem to keep. But this year I thought I’d try something different....

Long before I was a tireless travel nurse and an acid-tongued humor columnist, I was a young brat taking in a crazy world and making memories that would serve as fodder for countless columns and yarns in the years that followed....

Fall is the air, and while some of you may be planning luxury foliage-finding trips that can cost you as much as a refurbished piece of capital equipment, I’m thinking about...

It looks at one of the core challenges the American healthcare system faces today, through the lens of interviews with experts across the healthcare spectrum, by exploring solutions to the problem, rather than maliciously...

This special issue of Outpatient Surgery Magazine is dedicated to safety from both the patient and the staff perspectives. It’s a topic that is near and dear to me for many reasons. As a nurse with more 30 years’ experience working at...

I used to believe surgical facilities should operate just like the airline industry. Can you blame me? Flight crews rely on safety checklists, built-in redundancies and meticulous protocols to make sure planes take off...