A popular form of entertainment is a great way to boost your staff’s engagement in infection prevention training. “We decided to turn an entire education session into a zombie-themed escape room with an emphasis on...

Surgical apps provide surgical teams with instant access to a wealth of useful information, points out Adela Cuel, RN, CNOR, an OR nurse in Kingston, Tenn. She says the following apps can be purchased for around $1,...

Avoid using medication containers with barcodes imprinted horizontally on rounded surfaces because they could result in scanning failures that compromise patient safety, warns the Institute of Safe Medication Practices (ISMP)....

Patients don’t always pay attention to discharge information while they’re recovering in post-op or remember what they were told after they leave the facility. The written instructions they receive are often mixed in...

Endoscope care guidelines generally agree that dirty scopes can sit for an hour before reprocessing begins. Any longer, and bioburden is difficult to remove. To let reprocessing techs know how long scopes...

The transition from pandemic slowdown to high-volume hustle can be difficult for staff who have been through a lot both professionally and personally. To help boost morale, look for easy-to-implement and creative ways...

My partner and I offer free phone consultations for prospective patients to provide them with a timely diagnosis of their health conditions and schedule the treatments they need. That’s especially important when dealing with...

Last winter, our hospital’s surgical department closed and the entire outpatient surgery team was displaced to work in COVID-19 units. To boost spirits and morale when we returned to the OR, I planned a Step into Spring challenge...

It's important to include family members in the care of their loved ones on the day of surgery. Family members provide vital information about patients and help to ensure discharge instructions are followed, which prevents...

If it’s a chore to get everyone on board with helping to keep your facility clean, schedule “cleaning parties” during times when no surgeries are scheduled. During these dedicated cleaning days at our eye surgery center,...

Hopefully, we’ll never experience another pandemic and mandatory shutdown of elective surgery again. But if we do, we now know exactly how to keep our staff busy with meaningful work while they wait to reenter the OR....

When our management company instituted a day of service held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we jumped into action to see how we could support our local community. Two of our nurses, Patty Boyle and Dunbar Salin, worked with...

Throughout my career as a perioperative director and surgery center administrator, I've developed information packets that inform my teams about what accreditation surveyors might look for and ask about. I eventually thought...

Have you ever noticed a colleague not following hand hygiene protocols or forgetting to wipe down equipment with the proper cleaning products? It can be uncomfortable to call them out, especially in front of a patient. We use...

Many nursing students aren’t afforded a surgical rotation or clinical observation of an operating room during their schooling, so we created A Day in the Life of an OR Nurse program to showcase how rewarding working in...

We keep an emergency flip chart at the front desk of our ASC that’s filled with easy-to-follow emergency response protocols. We also conduct true-to-life safety drills to make sure our staff is ready for nearly any situation...

Our hospital used to have an issue with surgical team members wearing scrubs out of the facility, washing them at home and wearing them back to work, habits that went against proper laundering protocols and prevented us...

We’ve heard some wonderful stories about facilities that repurposed blue wrap to make sleeping mats and blankets for the homeless, and wanted to do something similar. Our blue wrap was too small to repurpose in that capacity,...

AORN guidelines stipulate that hair should be clipped around surgical sites to reduce the risk of infection. To make sure pre-op staff properly clip the right areas, we filled a binder with procedure-specific pages that indicate...

I love to color, and have taken up the hobby to relieve stress. I'm also a tactile and kinesthetic learner — someone who needs movement and hands-on training while learning. Research shows coloring reduces anxiety...