The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) has updated its guideline for preventing unintentionally retained surgical items (RSIs) with a recommendation...

Wrong-site surgery is devastating for the patient, the staff who worked the case and the surgeon who made the incorrect cut. Still, the avoidable error remains the third most...

Surgical sponges and other items used during surgery should never be left in the patient, and yet retained foreign object (RFO) events continue to occur. Why?...

Two years ago last month, the coronavirus began to spread across the country. The virulent strain, which most of us had never heard of before it quickly became part of...

How might an operating room look and behave five, 10, 15 years down the road? As a hip and knee surgeon, when you're performing a joint replacement procedure...

I once cared for a pediatric patient who had been intubated for respiratory failure caused by acute severe asthma two weeks before they presented for emergency...

I was raised to do the right thing and to stand up for the underdog. My dad, who was a middle school math teacher and basketball coach, advocated for the voiceless...

Members of perioperative teams must remember complex protocols — and know how to apply them in practice. McDonnell Outpatient Surgery Center at Piedmont Atlanta is part of a health system-wide safety program...

Physicians at the endoscopy center at Florida Medical Center in Tampa perform between 75 and 120 cases a day, so the facility is always buzzing. At a recent meeting called to identify daily obstacles and brainstorm...

Hopefully, there’s a robust hand hygiene culture among the staff at your facility. But what about your patients? They might not be as aware of the importance of keeping their hands clean during the course of their care. That’s why...

Ophthalmology is a physically demanding specialty. Surgeons spend good portions of their day looking through the eyepieces of surgical microscopes, leaning forward...

During fire drills — as well as in the event of an actual fire emergency — some facilities place a magnet on the outside of a room that says “Checked” or similar language to confirm that a room has been evacuated. This ensures...

You notice a sudden rise in the patient’s temperature and end-tidal CO2 levels along with an elevated heart rate and the early signs of muscle rigidity. The symptoms point...

Successful airway management can mean the difference between an uneventful surgery and a devastating outcome. “Anesthesia providers need to diligently evaluate...

Most cataract surgeons can remove a cloudy natural lens and implant an IOL in less than 10 minutes, so high-volume ophthalmic facilities thrive by finding ways to...

The steady movement of total hip and knee arthroplasties to outpatient ORs shows no signs of slowing down thanks to advances in minimally invasive surgical...

Stretcher chairs enable patients to remain on one surface from pre-op through a procedure and all the way to PACU. They eliminate the need for staff to laterally transfer...

Staff at Einstein Endoscopy Center in Blue Bell, Pa., used to receive annual ergonomics training based on a standardized program designed by experts who work for the large health system that owns the facility. The instruction...

The pandemic has highlighted the important work performed by surgical professionals and infection preventionists in surgery centers across the country as concerns...

The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) has released an updated guideline on preventing unintentionally retained surgical items (RSIs) that includes the recommendation to use technology to locate...