Special Editions Archive

There's arguably no more dangerous task in surgery during the coronavirus pandemic than intubating patients. Anesthesia professionals work inches from the airway,...

During the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, anesthesiologists used their exceptional skills to provide life-saving care under unimaginable pressure. That didn't surprise me...

Any reprocessing tech worth their scrub brush knows dirty instruments can't be properly sterilized. There's another instrument care risk hiding in plain sight, however,...

Prewarming Works Wonders; Early interventions to maintain normothermia reduce infection risks and increase patient satisfaction.

You recently took to social media to host a Q&A about the coronavirus. What surprised you most about the response?...

The sterile processing staff at Winchester (Va.) Medical Center reprocesses trays of instruments sent to them from 15 ORs. That's a lot to manage, so perhaps it's no surprise...

From the HIV crisis of the 1980s to the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, Maureen Spencer, MEd, RN, CIC, FAPIC, has seen a lot during her more than...

Imagine working in a facility where 50 orthopedic surgeons have their own unique skin prepping protocols. Factor in 20 nurses who are trying to support the variations...

Endoscopes must be long, narrow and flexible to do their jobs. This also makes them extremely delicate and notoriously difficult to clean. They can break in transport from the procedure room to the sterile processing area and can wear down from daily rounds of high-level disinfection....

We are entering a new and exciting era of surgery. Cutting-edge technology that seemed like it was straight out of a sci-fi movie just a few years ago is being used with...