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...

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...

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....

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,...

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...

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...

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,...

During appointments in our eye clinic, staff document the music preferences of patients in their charts. On the day of surgery, pre-op nurses refer to the charts — or ask patients about their favorite artists and songs...

We place ID and allergy bands on the ankles of cataract patients to improve our visualization of the vital information during safety time outs. Instead of pulling back covers and drapes to locate the bands on patients' wrists,...

After our state halted elective procedures last spring, returning to surgery and assuring our patients that the center functioned in the safest possible manner took a lot of planning — and no small amount of innovation...

At my former hospital, a patient expressed concern about sticker residue on the outside of the plastic binder that held their paper chart and wondered aloud about the overall cleanliness of the facility. A nurse quickly attempted...

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...

WIn the midst of the pandemic, we looked for a way to safely maximize the number of staff members who could hang out together during breaks and lunch. We found portable sneeze guards on Amazon — they cost less...

The coronavirus has forced us to change how we present ongoing education for our medical center's 120 perioperative team members. Monthly staff education at our hospital used to occur in a large conference room...

It's important to keep everyone on your staff engaged and connected, and fun group activities can help create a sense of community among the team. Try inviting members of your perioperative department to submit unique...

Our "Above and Beyond" program allows staff members to nominate their colleagues for recognition whenever they are seen upholding our facility's core values, which include always putting the patient first, being inclusive,...