In an emergency, there's no time to waste. From bad weather to bad outcomes, your staff must be prepared to respond to all sorts of emergencies — knowing what to do...

Another reason to always read and follow IFUs: Some enzymatic detergents require that you test the water temperature before you clean instruments and devices...

Before nursing students can go into the OR with the surgeons they’ve been assigned to, we show them the basics of hand hygiene, personal protection equipment...

Our cataract surgery patients never have to move from their pre-operative stretcher chair. We’ve programmed our 4 chairs to the exact height needed, per station,...

If your patient drinks all her prep the night before her colonoscopy screening, her colon will be fully cleaned out when she goes to bed. But the digestive system never sleeps....

To stay on top of your daily demands, host a daily morning huddle to get your team leaders on the same page. It’s a small change, but one that can help you manage...

When you rewrite your policy on reducing pressure injuries, you then need to get the right pressure redistributing devices to implement the policy. We invited vendors...

Ever take a close look at your trash? When we did, we found we were needlessly throwing away sponges and supplies. • Sponges. Only sponges that are grossly saturated in blood...

My day begins at 5:45 a.m. sharp when I walk from pre-op to PACU to check on everything from medical gases to medications. Here’s the mental checklist I complete...

Will your infection prevention practices pass inspection with accreditors and state health departments? Keep your facility in compliance by downloading this free checklist...

How can you expect your recovery room nurses to be on the lookout for pressure injuries when they don’t know what position the patient was in during surgery? A simple...

Our blood glucose logs include key reminders for our staff. • Check expiration dates. Each day we test a patient, we must test the blood sugar monitor to ensure the strips and solutions have not expired. A box of test strips

It's frustrating, not to mention a waste of valuable time, when central sterile returns incomplete or incorrect instrument sets to the OR. We snapped overhead cellphone pictures...

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,...

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...

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,...

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...

It's no great secret that injecting a small amount of 1% lidocaine under the skin just before the venipuncture will make IV starts a painless breeze for both patients and nurses,...

Of the many ways to reuse blue sterilization wrap, here's one you might not have considered: sew a couple sheets together to make a sleeping mat for homeless people...

Rather than handing patients a single-use plastic bag to store their belongings, we now give them a reusable blue plastic storage bucket. We have plenty of the 2-feet wide by 4-inches high buckets,...