The best defense for battling surgical site infections is a good offense. And part of a good offensive game plan is to make sure your OR nurses understand the importance...

In the early morning hours of Sept. 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into the southeast coast of Puerto Rico and tracked across the island with maximum sustained...

Having music playing in a surgical facility can make patients more comfortable. As a nurse who’s also a Julliard-trained violinist, I’ve taken it a step further by performing...

First, a disclaimer on emerging alternative wound-closure devices: There is nothing superior to the traditional suture in terms of approximating wound edges. On this, plastic...

It costs the Graystone Eye Surgery Center in Hickory, N.C., $1.05 to warm a patient. A loaner linen service charges $1 to clean a blanket, and the cost of using the...

This interactive vending machine houses, tracks and dispenses Xenco Medical’s sterile-packaged spinal instruments and implants. The Wi-Fi-enabled machine uses an advanced...

If you've invested in robots, you might as well let everyone know that your facility offers the most advanced surgical technology. Our hospital, Pascack Valley Medical...

Dirty instruments, broken instruments, missing instruments. In an ideal world, we'd never have to worry about the sterile processing department (SPD) causing...

If you use IV start kits, you might be wasting money with every catheter you place. Our IV start kits contained a number of items we never used, including povidone-iodine...

It's easy to blame this case of wrong-person surgery on the pathologist who admittedly mixed up biopsy slides, but we're still left to wonder what if anything the OR team...

Want to keep things running smoothly all day? Then get off to a fast start with your first-time starts. Here's how we did it:...

When I noticed patients who visited our hospital's emergency department carried their personal belongings home in single-use plastic bags, I knew there had to be...

To grasp the importance of preventing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection in joint replacement patients, consider what happens if the bacteria...

The SafeHaven automated hand hygiene monitoring system helps you monitor, measure and manage compliance. Every time a staff member performs an alcohol...

Roughly 70% of retained surgical items are sponges, and roughly 80% of retained sponges occur with what staff believe is a correct count. No wonder OR managers...

Whether you're a new OR leader still settling into your role or you've been herding surgeons for years and have the battle scars to prove it, one thing is certain:...

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I'd rather sleep a few minutes longer than make bacon and eggs or eat cereal that changes the color of...

Our OR nurses suggested that when we were doing the count, that would be a perfect time to have a conversation about specimens before they go out to pathology....

Surgical facilities track a lot of data — quality measures, patient census, service line revenue and so on. But here’s something that no one regularly tracks: lifetime...

Jennifer Pennock is AORN's senior manager of government affairs, though lately a better title for her might be senior manager of smoke evacuation legislation efforts....