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...

The National Ambulatory Surgery Center in San Jose, Calif., shares a small campus with other medical offices. Last spring, a man barged into the center’s administrative suite, where Marisa Ynchausti, RN, BSN, was working alone....

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...

Most cataract surgeons can remove a cloudy natural lens and implant an IOL in less than 10 minutes, so high-volume ophthalmic facilities thrive by finding ways to...

Stretcher chairs enable patients to remain on one surface from pre-op through a procedure and all the way to PACU. They eliminate the need for staff to laterally transfer...

Supply chain issues during the pandemic caused deliveries of Diet Coke, Mountain Dew and other sodas to be delayed at Vance Thompson Vision in Sioux Falls, S.D. When the soda deliveries went away in 2020, the facility’s leadership...

Staff at Einstein Endoscopy Center in Blue Bell, Pa., used to receive annual ergonomics training based on a standardized program designed by experts who work for the large health system that owns the facility. The instruction...

The pandemic has highlighted the important work performed by surgical professionals and infection preventionists in surgery centers across the country as concerns...

At the height of the pandemic last year, Paras Barnett, BSN, RN, HNB-BC, CMSRN, a nurse at Stanford Health Care in San Jose, Calif., knew her colleagues needed a way to...

I know from personal experience that if you drop a three-liter canister of solidified fluid waste onto an OR floor, it’s a nightmare to mop up. It’s like cleaning spilled Jell-O....

We’re almost two years into the pandemic and by now the revamped infection prevention protocols you rushed to implement in order to keep your doors open must...

Administrative staff can suffer from shoulder, back and neck strain caused by cradling phones between their ears and shoulders for hours on end, so Marisa Ynchausti, RN, BSN, clinical nurse manager at National Ambulatory...

Coming up with a discreet way to identify patients who have bloodborne pathogens such as HIV or hepatitis B — infectious diseases that pose risks to staff members — simultaneously maintains patient dignity...

Medicare requires surgical facilities to have an emergency plan in place for rare and dire events that could take place in a healthcare setting. Of course, even the most comprehensive emergency plan won’t help if...

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Surgeons clearly don’t intend to cause stray energy burns when they cut and coagulate tissue with energy-based surgical...

What does safe surgical care mean to you? Eliminating avoidable adverse events by developing and maintaining competent teams...

Proper medication safety requires surgical leaders to ask some very tough questions. Are employees stealing drugs for consumption or resale? Did a staffer not dilute a drug...

A nurse suffers a serious back injury while trying to lift a patient without help. A patient falls during the transition from the OR to the PACU. Unfortunately, these issues happen...

Why don’t all healthcare facilities employ some sort of surgical smoke evacuation system? Not only does surgical smoke smell and obstruct the surgeon’s view of the...