Simple solutions are almost always best. No one will accuse your facility of providing groundbreaking surgical care if you make sure patients clean their skin before...

The workplace environment at our surgery center is healthy and morale is high. We have regular pot luck dinners and wear T-shirts designed by the daughter of one of...

What's not to like about 4K ultra-high-definition surgical monitors? At 4 times the resolution of high definition, the picture quality is out of this world. If you're thinking...

Administering medications in the OR is wrought with challenges thanks to the patient's rapidly changing condition and constant distractions occurring in a fast-paced,...

The staff members who milled around the front desk of The Reading Hospital SurgiCenter at Spring Ridge were used to hearing one side of a familiar conversation....

Don't ignore the big-time importance of choosing the right small bone power tools for your upper and lower extremity surgeons. Here are some of the factors you need...

If you want your staff to relay safety concerns to you, you need to make it easy for them to report what they see. No one's going to fill out long, detailed forms....

Are your facility's venous thromboembolism (VTE) rates higher than the national standard of 3.72 events per 1,000 patient discharges? In 2016, our VTE rate rose...

How long has it been since you last heard about the importance of limiting the use of opioids to manage post-op pain. A few months since your last national...

For Mandy Pate, RN, CBN, everything about the sleeve gastrectomy was familiar. She knew every square inch of the operating room at the University of Michigan...

We're sticklers about ensuring staff wash or sanitize their hands before and after each patient contact. We use a secret code word, "Mango," to inform forgetful or...

Complex cataracts are becoming more common as increasing numbers of patients show up for surgery with risk factors for poor pupil dilation — uveitis, diabetes,...

You can scrub every inch of an OR until your elbows ache, but the minute someone steps into that clean space the air becomes contaminated simply because of...

Healthcare facilities continue to face challenges in performing safe and effective endoscope reprocessing. Is it any wonder? The complex design of endoscopes makes...

You can keep your office door open or your ear to the ground and still not be tuned in to what your staff really thinks. Our "You Said, We Did" form solves that issue....

When we experienced an uncharacteristic increase in SSIs starting in August 2018 — 9 infections over the next 6 months — we assumed the spike was related to opening...

Medication errors are all too frequent in the OR. A recent observational study identified an error in 5.3% of all anesthesia medication administrations — roughly 1 of every 20...

The essential elements of proper endoscope care begin well before the notoriously difficult-to-clean devices are ready for high-level disinfection. The following protocols...

Patient-centered care is one of surgery's hottest buzzwords for a reason. The patients who walk into your facility expect excellent surgical care. That much is a given....

My recent study showed that music can be just as effective as midazolam in calming patients' nerves before they receive peripheral nerve blocks. Based on those...