Ideas That Work: Strength in Numbers

Ideas That Work

By: Outpatient Surgery Editors

Published: 5/16/2019

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Track When You Cleaned Your Curtains.


At our facility, we have 31 pre-op and PACU bays, and each of those bays has 2 to 4 big curtain panels. That's a lot of panels that need to be laundered throughout the year. We've developed a simple system to track when we're sending our curtains out for laundry.

KEEP COUNT Numbering your pre-op and PACU curtains can keep you on track.

We number all our curtain panels with a Sharpie and keep a log of when we send them out for cleaning. Our staff write down the curtain number, the date the curtains go out and the date they've returned. At the end of the year, we can account for all our curtains and know how many times we've rotated them in and out.

When the accrediting agencies come around, it's good to show that you've accounted for everything, and we've found this helps us demonstrate we're thinking about even the smallest details.

Jamie Ridout, RN, MSN, MBA, NEA-BC, CNOR, CASC
Capital City Surgery Center
Raleigh, N.C.
[email protected]

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