Staff at Eye 35 ASC in Schertz, Texas, make sure a team member in each department is always available on a walkie-talkie. The devices — used by pre-op and PACU nurses, surgical team members and runners who turn over...

If you doubt the contention that it can take years — or even decades — for evidence to trickle into clinical practice, look no further than the lack of progress in implementing...

Surgeons are elite athletes in the operating room. They remain focused while executing precise maneuvers with complex instrumentation, and push through the pain of fatigued muscles...

St. Cloud (Minn.) Surgery Center underwent a recent renovation to accommodate a steady increase in demand for outpatient arthroplasties. The center expanded...

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...

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...

The National Ambulatory Surgery Center in San Jose, Calif., shares a small campus with other medical offices. Last spring, a man barged into the center’s administrative suite, where Marisa Ynchausti, RN, BSN, was working alone....

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...

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...

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...

Supply chain issues during the pandemic caused deliveries of Diet Coke, Mountain Dew and other sodas to be delayed at Vance Thompson Vision in Sioux Falls, S.D. When the soda deliveries went away in 2020, the facility’s leadership...

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...

At the height of the pandemic last year, Paras Barnett, BSN, RN, HNB-BC, CMSRN, a nurse at Stanford Health Care in San Jose, Calif., knew her colleagues needed a way to...

I know from personal experience that if you drop a three-liter canister of solidified fluid waste onto an OR floor, it’s a nightmare to mop up. It’s like cleaning spilled Jell-O....

We’re almost two years into the pandemic and by now the revamped infection prevention protocols you rushed to implement in order to keep your doors open must...

Administrative staff can suffer from shoulder, back and neck strain caused by cradling phones between their ears and shoulders for hours on end, so Marisa Ynchausti, RN, BSN, clinical nurse manager at National Ambulatory...

Medicare requires surgical facilities to have an emergency plan in place for rare and dire events that could take place in a healthcare setting. Of course, even the most comprehensive emergency plan won’t help if...

Coming up with a discreet way to identify patients who have bloodborne pathogens such as HIV or hepatitis B — infectious diseases that pose risks to staff members — simultaneously maintains patient dignity...