Outpatient Surgery Magazine Archive

How long can an endoscope hang in storage before you have to reprocess it again? There's no definitive answer, but 7 days is the consensus storage interval based on research...

Wrong-site blocks represent nearly one-fourth of all wrong-site procedures, yet we hear precious little about nerve block safety. Block site marks aren’t always visible,...

What do you do when a patient wants to climb into the back of an Uber, Lyft or taxi after surgery instead of riding home in the front seat with a responsible caregiver? And what if...

It’s critical to stay up to date on the latest clinical research, but how do you find the time? Start a weekly journal club. Every Thursday for our adult reconstruction service,...

I never need an excuse to have fun with my incredible surgical team. We celebrate birthdays, babies and big-time staff achievements. We even turned our employee engagement...

There are so many ways to communicate with staff — emails, phone calls, text messages, snail mail, intercoms, breakroom bulletin boards, you name it — yet none of those...

True safety in the OR isn't about what you report to CMS and the various rating agencies that will grade you for quality. Self-reported safety surveys offer a lot of wiggle room...

Ever think of all you can do to optimize your patients' experience and improve their surgical outcomes — before they even step foot into your facility? Here are 5 easy ways...

It's hard to believe that I used to perform spine surgery by moving instruments based on feel, my ability to recall specifics about the patient's anatomy and grainy pictures...

In an effort to reduce the infection rate among our colon resection patients, we took some advice from our GYN/ONCO surgeons on closing protocol. They had started the practice of changing gowns,...