Did skin prep fuel this fire? Alcohol-based skin preps cause only 4% of OR fires, but you must still exercise care when applying these flammable agents.

Let's team up to prevent patient harm. Our exploration of surgical safety kicks off with a look at the persistent problem of medical care gone wrong.

Safety: Fine tune your time outs. 4 ways to encourage your staff to speak up to prevent an error.

Stop the Trendelenburg slide. Positioning tips to keep patients safe while they're in a steep head-down tilt.

At ORX, an expert recipe for improved patient safety. Leadership, teamwork and communication are key, says Kenneth P. Rothfield, MD, MBA, CPE, CPPS.

Stay current on electrosurgery. Don't let your patients get burned by energy-based technology.

5 keys to a fast and focused MH response. Staff who act quickly and decisively are more likely to save a life.

My son did not have to die. Learn from the avoidable opioid-induced hypoxia that took his life.

Marking the site right (correctly). There are lots of ways to do it wrong, but only a couple of ways to do it right.

Spot every sponge. Give your staff the help they need to ensure no object is left behind.

Pearls for proper patient positioning. Use the right type of equipment for the patient and the procedure to keep your patients safe.

Stop the preventable medical error crisis. How many more patients must die before we decide enough is enough?

It's time for honest discussions about medical care gone wrong. Q&A with Marty Makary, MD, MPH, patient safety advocate and healthcare transparency proponent.

Report: Anesthesiologist's blocks blinded 5 cataract patients in one morning. Patients reportedly screamed as anesthesiologist working his first day at the center inserted the needle.

A hospital that removed a kidney from the wrong patient blames referring physician. A kidney removal case brought the wrong patient to the OR table.

A new way to think about retained items. Studies on the psychology of counting helped shape AORN's updated prevention guideline.

Are your safety checklists effective enough? Without these teamwork qualities, your OR staff's pre-surgical rundowns may be incomplete.

Shopping for safer tourniquets. These features help prevent pressure-related injuries and other potentially serious complications.

SPECIAL REPORT: Compounding disaster: How the deadliest medication contamination case in U.S. history happened — and how it could happen again.

Anesthesia tech sentenced to 1 year for molesting unconscious patients. Nurses reported seeing him touch 4 male patients, including 1 minor.