In May, 2023, we sent out a survey to our perioperative colleagues asking to learn more about the challenges they face in the operating room. We all have good days and bad. But we also have recurring headaches that, when not corrected, threaten to tip the balance of those days in favor of the bad.

More than 4,700 responses were recorded over a three-week period and the results enable us to understand where there are opportunities to improve technology and systems in and around the OR.

Download the Survey Results Infographic.

Where do these perioperative nurses work?

We asked our audience to indicate their healthcare facility type, as well as describe the size and makeup of their teams. More than 66% of respondents work in acute care hospitals or facilities, with the rest working in ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) or as consultants affiliated with both or another type of healthcare organization (less than 1%).

Most respondents work on surgical teams with between six and 20 perioperative nurses, and overwhelmingly (almost 80%) of respondents believe they have enough staff members to get the job done. Almost 82% of respondents feel they have enough time to get their work done while they’re on duty, too.

What challenges do these perioperative nurses face during shifts?

Despite the pervasive sense that team sizes are sufficient, about 75% of nurses responded that they do work longer than their scheduled shifts, with the majority of those who work additional hours doing so one or more times per week. When it comes to duties, nurses are dealing with add-on cases, providing patient care, documenting, or grappling with administrative tasks:

Additional add-on tasks include dealing with overbooking, next-day prep work and training.

How is technology helping or hindering these nurses’ workflows?

Almost 96% of survey respondents work at a facility with electronic health records (EHR) systems in place, and almost 60% of those who don’t have EHR say their organization is working toward EHR implementation (the most common EHR systems include MEDITECH and Altera Digital Health). But just because a perioperative team has an EHR in place does not mean that it’s optimized.

More than 500 respondents weighed in on what aspects of their EHR could be improved:

EHR perioperative documentation appears to be a pain point for many nurses, likely due to the fact that out-of-the-box EHR systems are not equipped with OR-appropriate documentation, or they have redundant content that causes documentation burden. Nurses also claim to endure hiccups with procedure scheduling, clinical practice support, interoperability and missing specialty content for specific areas of practice.

More specifically, documentation was frequently indicated to be missing or incomplete, and healthcare teams did not have an informatics nurse on the team to help optimize EHR documentation. When it comes to surgical scheduling, respondents complained most about block utilization of the OR, underutilization of the OR, overutilization of the OR, and incorrect procedures scheduling.

What are your biggest perioperative challenges?

To recap, most respondents believe they have enough staff members and time to get their job done. Most perioperative nurses today are working with EHR technology, and many are finding it helpful. This is great news!

But, for those nurses who are running out of time and working long hours to compensate for staff shortages or technological ineffectiveness, perioperative documentation is missing or duplicative. When it comes to surgical procedures, ORs are often over or under booked, and procedures are misassigned. These headaches can add up to a lot of wasted time and money. Additionally, patient safety is at risk when a facility’s EHR is not providing optimal perioperative content.

How can you overcome these common perioperative challenges?

The solution is, of course, to infuse your EHR with the appropriate documentation and surgical procedures content. AORN Syntegrity® is a two-party content solution that includes both perioperative nursing documentation and a surgical procedure library that’s mapped to CPT®, ICD-10-PCS® and SNOMED CT® code sets. It can be easily integrated with most existing EHR systems so as not to tax IT teams. Plus, it is updated quarterly to ensure that all perioperative documentation and procedure codes are current.

AORN Syntegrity makes it easy to overcome these common perioperative challenges. Schedule a quick demo to find out how AORN Syntegrity can streamline your workflow for better patient outcomes and lower costs.