This continuing education activity will provide a review of the key criteria for evaluating the performance of surgical fabrics. The critical traits of quality surgical fabrics will be outlined, including a discussion of their clinical significance in the perioperative practice setting, with a focus on linting and barrier protection.

Nurses and infection preventionists are balancing staff and patient safety, prevention of hospital-acquired infections, and the ever-changing regulatory environment. This program focuses on isolation gowns because they are a critical element of PPE, in that they prevent staff and patient exposure to infectious diseases and improve patient outcomes.

This program identifies concerns currently associated with intraoperative transfusion and describes effective PBM strategies, including the use of topical hemostatic agents. The importance of using a validated intraoperative bleeding scale to assess and compare the efficacy of these agents is emphasized.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) represents a major cause of mortality in the United States, contributing to approximately 30% of all injury-related deaths. This program will describe clinical strategies to leverage advanced analytics in multi-modality monitoring to influence care in the intensive care unit (ICU). Faculty will invite questions and stimulate an interactive environment for learning.

Learn how to lengthen the instrument life cycle and protect your investment by applying best practices for instrument and endoscope reprocessing. Identify proper care and handling, plus discover the most common instrument damages and their causes.

This course will provide an overview of common healthcare-acquired infections and will offer practical information for appropriately following infection prevention practices that healthcare workers can use to protect themselves and the patients they care for.

This program is designed to increase knowledge of the basics of skin health and its impact for people with incontinence. The activity will provide practical knowledge for clinicians on the care of fragile skin as well as including factors that influence skin health, how to maintain a balanced microbiome, what happens when the microbiome becomes unbalanced, and how to treat conditions related to declines in skin health.

Hillrom™ Safe Patient Handling & Mobility - Sabina® Sit-to-Stand Lift

Heat discomfort experienced by OR team members can contribute to diminished workflow efficiency and barriers preventing optimal team collaboration. This continuing education activity will describe the unique challenges associated with heat in the operating room and how it affects the surgical team.

Fires in the operating room can occur in a patient’s airway, face, body surface, surgical wound, and perineal area – potentially resulting in severe pain, disfigurement and, in some cases, death. The purpose of this educational program is to review the components of the fire triangle and to describe measures to prevent operating room fires. Actions to take if a fire occurs as well as considerations for a fire safety plan will also be discussed.

While the hazards of exposure to surgical smoke in the operating room are well documented, barriers to consistent use of smoke evacuation technologies exist. This course features Dr. Lisa Hunsicker, a surgeon champion for surgical smoke evacuation, who discusses her role in advocating for smoke-free ORs in her facility and in the legislature.

Electrosurgery may be hazardous, so it is important that clinicians understand how electricity behaves and relates to electrosurgical function and applications can contribute to its safe use. Knowledge of the intraoperative and postoperative medical and nursing considerations and interventions can impact positive patient outcomes.

This continuing education activity will provide a historical review of the evolution of the use of surgical gloves as a protective barrier. The impact of occupational exposure on healthcare workers will be presented. The implications of double gloving in the surgical practice setting will be discussed, including approaches to implement a change in practice and the identification of perceived barriers.

As more elective procedures are shifting to ambulatory surgery and endoscopy centers, these facilities are tasked with reprocessing an increasing volume of reusable medical devices, while adhering to the same regulations and standards as larger healthcare facilities. This program discusses how to meet these challenges and ensure devices are properly cleaned and disinfected.

This educational activity is for the healthcare professional who is involved in the care of patients who are at high risk for arthritis and comorbidities, such as obesity and depression. At-risk individuals include women and those of African American and Hispanic descent. This group demonstrates “health disparities”, which are preventable differences in health status.

The intraoperative transfusion of blood and blood products is associated with increased healthcare costs and negative patient outcomes. To address these concerns and limit unnecessary transfusions, a variety of patient blood management strategies are available, including the use of topical hemostatic agents.

This continuing education program will discuss the best practices around leveling and monitoring, challenges associated with external ventricular drain (EVD) therapy, and how evidence-based practices may impact patient outcomes.

Plan your response to growing demand for minimally invasive surgery. Identify opportunities and explore strategies for expanding service lines and surgical settings that optimize staff and investment in robotics.

This education activity reviews clinical considerations related to skin closure methods that can help meet the goal of infection risk reduction. The types of available skin closures will be presented, as well as how they can be differentiated from each other. Clinical outcomes for patients using different types of skin closures will be presented and compared.

Management of bleeding is an important part of any invasive procedure, and a wide variety of topical adjunctive hemostatic agents are available to supplement the surgeon’s application of conventional approaches to this critical outcome. This course begins with a description of the components of whole blood and the natural process of hemostasis, followed by an explanation of where topical hemostats act within this sequence of events.