Taping a blue line on the floor in the sterile processing department where case carts full of dirty instruments should be lined up keeps them organized and eliminates...

First the bad news: There's no way to eliminate the risk of a lawsuit. As long as you are practicing, the risk exists. The good news: You can manage risk and limit...

Skin prepping is serious business at our facility. So serious, in fact, that the staff who prep patients before surgery wear different colored gowns than the rest of the OR...

The annual American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Anesthesiology conference is the world's largest anesthesia meeting. On a clinical level, I'm here to see the latest...

Got both my knees replaced in late August — and both at the same time. Yes, I only had one surgery, one hospital stay and one course of rehabilitation, but the pain...

The long, narrow lumens of flexible endoscopes can make reprocessing the delicate instruments feel like an exercise in futility. But despite the inherent challenges...

You never know where you'll learn lessons about caring for patients, so I'm always on the lookout for excellence in service that I can translate to patient care....

You can buy all the 4K surgical monitors you want, but unless you have a 4K surgical camera feeding them images, along with a 4K-capable camera control unit and...

It should come as no surprise that most outpatient facilities warm their surgical patients. After all, there's an ever-growing mountain of evidence that says warming...

It’s not uncommon for staff members in one department to believe they do more or matter more than their colleagues who work in other areas of the facility....

Looking for a more efficient way to put your OR team’s suggestions into day-to-day practice? First, make it easy for staff to share their process improvement ideas....

When it comes to keeping patients happy when their case start times are delayed, clear and consistent communication is key. That’s easier said than done. Nurses are always...

Every patient who walks into your facility expects to undergo successful surgery and receive compassionate care. In today’s competitive, consumer-driven healthcare...

Sometimes you need to go old-school to get a key point across to your staff. We recently updated our periarticular injection cocktail as part of a multimodal pain...

Near the end of the day, 6 recovery room nurses were standing around the PACU desk chatting it up. Not one of them was doing chart reviews or making follow-up calls...

My mission from hospital leadership: Reduce sharps injuries in our 2 regional hospitals by 5% in a year. We far exceeded our goals, managing a 60% reduction from...

Patients’ friends or family members are often invited to bedsides in pre-op and the PACU, but don’t always have a place to sit as they offer support to their loved ones....

No food or drink past midnight is slowly giving way to carbo-loading up to 2 hours before surgery. Fasting past midnight has been an unwritten Ordinance of the OR...

In the absence of antibiotic alternatives, physicians in the early 1900s had no choice but to treat every infection with penicillin. Chronic pain went through a similar...

A large hospital had so many case carts full of trays backed up during the day they struggled to turn around instrument sets in less than 24 hours. Within 6 months,...