Retained surgical items are considered "never events" because they're never supposed to occur — and yet they still happen all too often. "They remain the sentinel event most...

Every surgical patient should be warmed, whether it's to keep them comfortable in chilly ORs or prevent the chilling effects of perioperative hypothermia. It's equally clear that...

Patients are already nervous and anxious before surgery. Add dehydrated and hungry to the equation and their discomfort spikes as their blood sugar drops. How well...

During my anesthesia training, instructors would often compare the complexities of administering sedation to learning how to fly a plane. Anesthesia providers, like their pilot counterparts, undergo rigorous training....

Endophthalmitis is a rare, but potentially devastating, eye infection that can cause permanent loss of vision. Advances in instrument sterilization practices, more effective...

The medication errors that cause serious patient harm can be avoided through better safety practices and system changes. Half of the items that landed on the Institute for...

Keeping your patients safe is obviously a core value at your facility, yet compliance with best practices designed to avert serious complications and injuries is sometimes alarmingly low. Use this quiz as a starting point to gauge how well your staff is ready to spare your patients from unnecessary harm.

Patient warming prevents inadvertent perioperative hypothermia, which can cause vasoconstriction, tissue hypoxia and a decreased ability to fight infections. Perioperative warming...

There is currently no clear consensus for when it’s safe to operate on patients who are recovering from COVID-19. A baseline was set in March with the publication of an international, multicenter study by the enormous...

Members of the perioperative team at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore work many challenging surgeries on very sick patients, yet can count the number of pressure...

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common disorder affecting approximately one in four adults. It's also often undiagnosed — 90% of people with OSA don't know they have it — and undertreated. Failure to appropriately...

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Outpatient Surgery Magazine's eNews Briefs. Bringing you the surgical news you want.

Retained foreign objects was the most frequently reported adverse event between 2015 and 2017, according to The Joint Commission. We decided to tackle this issue head on by developing a custom count board...

The two-inch red circle on the patient's sacrum was unmistakable. A PACU nurse noticed the deep tissue injury during a post-op assessment and called over to pre-op to see if one of her colleagues had documented...

If you want to roll out a patient warming protocol that requires your facility to invest time, resources money — and, of course, a change to the status quo — you need to give leadership a compelling reason why...