Patients who underwent surgery at Hunterdon Center for Surgery in Flemington, N.J., used to store their street clothes in non descript plastic bags. But then leadership saw an opportunity to improve on the practice...

Getting operating rooms ready for the first case of the day and cleaning the spaces between cases demands plenty of teamwork, coordination and hard work. You can use...

Cataract surgery outcomes are consistently good, but are they good enough to guarantee? They are if Uday Devgan, MD, FACS, is manning the microscope. In the rare...

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....

Several years ago, a 96-year-old woman who was experiencing severe chest pain came to see me. She could no longer eat and explained that — for 40 years! — she had been...

Surgical professionals are growing more interested in finding ways to eliminate opioids from the post-op pain management equation and the stakes have never been higher....

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...

The first step to ensuring your facility’s instruments are properly cleaned and sterilized is grasping the importance of the tasks and appreciating the hardworking staff...

Approach greening your facility as a strong and steady tortoise would, rather than a hare sprinting out of the box. “Build a strong foundation,” says Kaeleigh Sheehan,...

The early November morning broke cool and clear, a perfect day for the 50th running of the New York City Marathon. Tomoaki Kato, MD, MBA, FACS, stretched with nervous...

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...

December is a natural time to look back at all you accomplished over the past 12 months. One of the advantages of working for a magazine is the tangible evidence each issue provides. It’s all there in black and white,...

It’s the middle of a hectic day and your worst nightmare just happened. A patient has fallen, and now you must check for potential injuries and reassure them and their family members that everything is alright....

Great ideas for your OR

“Load up the SUV honey, because we’re moving to Arizona.” That’s how I broke the news to my wife last year when I agreed to become the CEO of a small surgical center in a rural part of northern Arizona. I spent most...

Colonoscopes are the workhorses of endoscopy centers. When evaluating these products, focus on their reliability, image quality and features that improve visualization and navigation for the endoscopist. Let’s drill down...

After what we endured in 2020, you’d think it’d be easy to find more than a few reasons to be thankful this year. But some folks are having trouble letting go of the chronic-complaint, woe-is-me mindset that was so easy...

At its core, shared governance is nothing more than giving the people who do the actual work a voice in how that work is done. While that sounds like common sense, surgical leaders everywhere know this isn’t often the case...

Are you are on a first-name basis with the men and women who bring important supplies and equipment to your facility on a weekly (or sometimes daily) basis? Bill Willis, RN, the ASC director at Vance Thompson Vision in...

Patients who receive care at the Advanced Spine Center of Wisconsin in Neenah undergo long procedures, leaving patient escorts to sit for hours while they wait. “After a handful of patient satisfaction surveys noted that...