Zero is always the goal. Our surgery center works tirelessly on multiple fronts to ensure no patient walks away from an elective procedure with a surgical site infection (SSI). Of course, hitting that elusive benchmark is always...

Five or 10 years ago, a basic anesthesia machine was perfectly suitable in many outpatient ORs. Times have changed, however, as the differences between hospitals...

Staff at Eye 35 ASC in Schertz, Texas, make sure a team member in each department is always available on a walkie-talkie. The devices — used by pre-op and PACU nurses, surgical team members and runners who turn over...

When you place patients head down with their stirrup-supported legs reaching skyward at a 30- to 45-degree angle, there is a laundry list of things that could go wrong,...

Performing immediate sequential bilateral cataract surgery (ISBCS) offers plenty of potential benefits. Surgeons appreciate being able to halve post-op visits...

RaDonda Vaught stood in silence next to her attorney, seemingly resigned to her fate as the jury rendered its verdict. Guilty of gross neglect of an impaired adult. ...

Wrong-site, wrong-side and wrong-patient surgeries are never acceptable, even on an OR's busiest day. Follow these five basic steps to avoid these devastating surgical errors....

The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) has updated its guideline for preventing unintentionally retained surgical items (RSIs) with a recommendation...

Wrong-site surgery is devastating for the patient, the staff who worked the case and the surgeon who made the incorrect cut. Still, the avoidable error remains the third most...

Surgical sponges and other items used during surgery should never be left in the patient, and yet retained foreign object (RFO) events continue to occur. Why?...

Two years ago last month, the coronavirus began to spread across the country. The virulent strain, which most of us had never heard of before it quickly became part of...

How might an operating room look and behave five, 10, 15 years down the road? As a hip and knee surgeon, when you're performing a joint replacement procedure...

I once cared for a pediatric patient who had been intubated for respiratory failure caused by acute severe asthma two weeks before they presented for emergency...

I was raised to do the right thing and to stand up for the underdog. My dad, who was a middle school math teacher and basketball coach, advocated for the voiceless...

Members of perioperative teams must remember complex protocols — and know how to apply them in practice. McDonnell Outpatient Surgery Center at Piedmont Atlanta is part of a health system-wide safety program...

Physicians at the endoscopy center at Florida Medical Center in Tampa perform between 75 and 120 cases a day, so the facility is always buzzing. At a recent meeting called to identify daily obstacles and brainstorm...

Hopefully, there’s a robust hand hygiene culture among the staff at your facility. But what about your patients? They might not be as aware of the importance of keeping their hands clean during the course of their care. That’s why...

Ophthalmology is a physically demanding specialty. Surgeons spend good portions of their day looking through the eyepieces of surgical microscopes, leaning forward...

During fire drills — as well as in the event of an actual fire emergency — some facilities place a magnet on the outside of a room that says “Checked” or similar language to confirm that a room has been evacuated. This ensures...

You notice a sudden rise in the patient’s temperature and end-tidal CO2 levels along with an elevated heart rate and the early signs of muscle rigidity. The symptoms point...