3 fire prevention tips. Your OR team can minimize the chance of a surgical fire.

Anesthesia alert: Who's unsafe for outpatient surgery? Certain patients shouldn't get past your anesthesia gatekeepers.

Safety: Quiet, Please: Noise distractions in the OR. Silence is golden during the critical stages of surgery.

Lawsuit over left-behind ligating clip can proceed. Surgeons allegedly left a ligating clip in a patient's bladder after robot-assisted prostate removal.

Study: "Frailty" a better predictor of complications than age in low-risk surgeries. Informed consent should deemphasize age, increase emphasis on frailty, say the authors.

CDC study: Doctors and nurses admit to reusing syringes for multiple patients at dangerously high rates. Researchers found that 12% of physicians and 3% of nurses reuse syringes in their workplace.

7 tips to prevent medication errors. Ensure the right dose of the right medication reaches the right patient.

5 tips for safely handling sleep apnea patients. Most of your obstructive sleep apnea patients don't even know they have it.

Are your patients at risk of DVT? The vascular surgeon who created the Caprini Score discusses how to protect your patients from life-threatening blood clots.

Lessons from 3 wrong-site surgeries. Focus on what really happened, not what's supposed to happen.

Let's ban surgical smoke. It's time to protect all surgical professionals from the harmful effects of toxic plumes.

Make MH drills count. Realistic practice sessions could someday prove to be life-saving exercises.

The horror and heartbreak of a retained object. Nurses with firsthand experience of retained surgical items carry deep emotional scars.

Inmate claims he was needlessly handcuffed and shackled during and after emergency appendectomy. Despite objections from surgeon, prison guards kept patient restrained for days, according to lawsuit.

Deep dive into VTE prevention. Match prophylaxis to patient-specific risks to guard against clot formation.

Can you pass our electrosurgery quiz. Find out how much your surgeons and staff know about the science of surgical energy.

8 ways to prevent pressure ulcers. How to maintain the integrity of each patient's skin.

Reducing the risk of wrong-site surgery. Key defenses in the battle to eliminate preventable harm include the time out, pre-operative verification process and site marking.

Novel stress test determines when surgeons are ready to cut loose. At the Missouri University School of Medicine, they're measuring how much residents sweat during surgery.

Safety: What good are surgical safety checklists? They're effective only if your team uses them -- and uses them properly.