Patient warming is a patient safety and patient satisfaction must for top-performing outpatient facilities....

To reduce hospital-acquired infections among surgery patients, don’t let your fingernails grow beyond your fingertips and understand that, in many cases, less handwashing...

Your OR may seem spotless and sterile, but tiny airborne particles could still be lingering in the air, potentially causing post-op surgical site infections (SSIs)....

Skin antisepsis practices that destroy microorganisms and inhibit the microbial load on your patients’ skin should be the cornerstone of every surgical procedure...

Warming every patient no matter the duration of the surgery is the best course of action for facilities, says J.D. Buchert, MSN, M.Ed., MS, RN, workforce safety manager...

Surgical site infections (SSIs), among the most common complications in health care, are responsible for delayed wound healing, hospital readmissions...

I’ve been in the infection prevention program here at UnityPoint Health - Meriter for about 12 years, where I split my time between doing disease...

A safe and efficient sterile processing department is a cornerstone of every facility’s infection prevention and safety efforts....

The intraoperative normothermia compliance rate at our 25-OR facility was 56% in September 2021, far lower than the numbers from our...

It’s probably a good policy to avoid sticking your nose in everyone’s business. But when it comes to infection prevention, hospitals and surgery centers...

The surgical services team at Ascension St. Vincent Mercy Hospital, a critical access hospital in Elwood, Ind., is proud of the exacting standards that we hold...

Surgical site infections (SSIs) can be reduced when leaders standardize the preoperative skin preparation solutions and protocols their...

The road to poor infection prevention practices is often paved with good intentions from staff. That’s why Michelle Barron, MD, is such a...

During the pandemic — and even before the arrival of COVID-19 — many healthcare facilities tapped into the high-tech power of whole room...

One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic did was put infection preventionists (IPs) front and center....

Like many ASCs, OAM Surgery Center at MidTowne in Grand Rapids, Mich., is concerned about unnecessary traffic going in and out of its ORs....

Getting your OR to remember all relevant surgical site infection (SSI) prevention protocols isn’t always easy — especially for the facilities with...

In the past five years, a flood of literature on surgical smoke hazards has confirmed what nurses and surgeons have been complaining about and, in extreme cases...

A healthy patient population is a cornerstone of outpatient surgery. Those fortunate enough to be greenlighted for same-day procedures get to...

Just because an instrument has been reprocessed doesn’t mean that it’s clean. In some cases, that’s because reprocessing techs are rushing and forced...