When patients are screened for procedures at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, nurses ask if they’ve recently run out of food before they had money to buy more, or if they’ve been worried about that possibility....

Nancy Yen Shipley, MD (@_NancyMD), an orthopedic surgeon at Multnomah Orthopedic Clinic in Portland, Ore., recently posted on #OrthoTwitter a unique hack she developed when handling a supply shortage....

Communication issues led to confusion for some Orange County Digestive Center patients who didn’t want the person who picked them up and drove them home to know the results of their procedure....

The national company that supplied Lakeland (Fla.) Surgical & Diagnostic Center with food and drinks was experiencing shortages and found itself unable to provide the facility with crackers for patients, diet soda for surgeons...

Teams in sterile processing departments are often tasked to do more with less, especially when surgeons push to perform more cases than the instrument inventory can handle and reprocessing techs are pressured...

The Medical Play Distraction Therapy program at Shriners Children’s Lexington (SCL), Ky., doesn’t end when pediatric patients are discharged. Parents are instructed to contact the recreational therapist who worked with...

Milton Lee (Chip) Routt Jr., MD, has always preferred to put pen to bedsheet. He has been drawing detailed illustrations of anatomy to facilitate his teachings to residents for decades. “The bedsheets of pre-op beds are great canvases...

Every surgical provider knows what a warm blanket can do for patient satisfaction. But why limit yourself to blankets? At Advanced CardioVascular Solutions in Oklahoma City, every patient who comes through its doors receives...

The Healthcare Sterile Processing Association (HSPA) recently hosted a webinar during which three guest speakers discussed strategies to maintain individual positivity and enhance the culture of the workgroup. One of...

Cynthia Hawks, BSN, RN, CNOR, CSSM, surgical clinical coordinator for neurology and ENT at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center in Shenandoah, Texas, has had a copy of the April 2020 issue of Outpatient Surgery...

Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City has contributed $20,000 to Valley Regional Transit to expand its Rides2Wellness Program, which helps people get to their medical appointments by providing free transportation....

One of the best ways to fight back against the notion that high-volume procedures at busy facilities are the epitome of impersonal, assembly-line care is to add a personal touch whenever possible. Even the smallest efforts...

In the main OR at University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City, surgical instruments were consistently going missing, so a multidisciplinary team sought to pinpoint the source of the issue and correct it. The result...

One of the ASCs run by the Florida Medical Clinic in the Tampa area has found a way to give its employees much-needed mental rests during busy days of surgery. Leadership bought two large coloring posters — one of a sloth...

The practice of requiring healthcare workers to search for medications by typing in at least the first five letters of the intended drug into automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs) would go a long way toward preventing potentially...

Sure, you know the workplace personalities of your staff, but how well do you really know them? Here’s a fun and effective way to find out more about the people you work with. Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center...

You never want to run out of key supplies your surgical team needs on a daily basis, but you also don’t want to throw away items because they’ve expired. That’s why staff at Eye 35 ASC in Schertz, Texas, place star stickers on items...

Recently, Edward Oates, MD, a trauma and orthopedic surgeon in Germany, posted a question to #orthotwitter: “How do you avoid cuts to your distal interphalangeal joints when using suture thread?” After many providers replied...

Throughout the course of a day, certain instruments require special attention or need to be fast-tracked through the reprocessing cycle and returned to the ORs as soon as possible. Attaching a green plastic placard...

It can be difficult to diagnose the signs and symptoms of postoperative delirium in patients. “We knew we had to educate our staff about the condition, but felt that presenting the information with a PowerPoint presentation...