BOARD MEETING Christy Carraway, CST (left), and Beth Henson, RN, check fire prevention protocols before surgery.

BEYOND THE CHECKLIST
Post Patient Safety Boards in Your ORs

Looking for a simple way to prompt your surgical team to conduct patient safety checks before starting surgery? We created custom patient safety white boards (visicare.com) that hang in each of our ORs. The boards include all facets of our pre-op time outs, surgical item counts, the timing of beta-blocker administration and antibiotics, and fire risk assessment checks. There's also space on the boards to note important reminders for everyone to see. Nurses note the patient's name, the procedure and any allergies the surgical team needs to be aware of. We also included a space for "other" patient-specific information that our staff needs to confirm or check.

Jill Asher, RN, CNOR, RNFA
Murray Calloway County Hospital
Murray, Ky.
[email protected]