Nancy Yen Shipley, MD (@_NancyMD), an orthopedic surgeon at Multnomah Orthopedic Clinic in Portland, Ore., recently posted on #OrthoTwitter a unique hack she developed when handling a supply shortage....

Communication issues led to confusion for some Orange County Digestive Center patients who didn’t want the person who picked them up and drove them home to know the results of their procedure....

Purchasing a big-ticket item like a spine table — a crucial piece of equipment for any spine surgery service line — is a decision that goes well beyond that upfront investment....

Superior safety benefits and error-reduction capabilities. Significant time savings. Reduced waste. The benefits of premixed, prelabeled syringes far outweigh the minimal drawbacks, so why are there still facilities that insist on...

No provider wants their patients to feel nauseous in recovery, but the importance of preventing one of surgery’s most dreaded complications seems a bit higher when children are involved — especially because kids are twice as likely as...

Keeping fluid off the floors of ORs is obviously a critical safety issue. Staff injuries from slips, trips and falls are among the top culprits causing lost workdays that often result...

There’s no question the invention of video laryngoscopes changed the way providers tackled the critical issue of airway management. But for years after these game-changing devices hit the market, usage was limited only to those...

Standardization is often the common denominator among successful total joints programs. Take Knoxville Orthopaedic Surgery Center (KOSC), which opened in December 2009 and has had a total joints service line...

You’ve had a chaotic morning. The first patient of the day canceled their procedure and your nurse navigator called in sick, throwing your facility’s entire schedule off track....

A few months ago, after a very long day, I closed my laptop following a late evening Teams call with my then-boss Dan Cook, and said to my wife, “I don’t know how that guy pulls this off each month....”

The effects of a single retained surgical item (RSI) are often catastrophic to the unfortunate patients who fall victim to these sentinel events. As for the facilities who commit these never-events, the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority...

Sound electrosurgical safety practices often come down to preventing complacency from setting in among the staff who use these high-powered devices to cut and coagulate tissue during countless surgical procedures.

It looks at one of the core challenges the American healthcare system faces today, through the lens of interviews with experts across the healthcare spectrum, by exploring solutions to the problem, rather than maliciously...

A high-volume OR is booked to perform six consecutive hand surgeries. Five are scheduled on the right hand, and one, the fourth operation of the day, which is scheduled for 3 p.m., is scheduled on the left hand....

There’s no shortage of compelling data and research on exactly what it takes to prevent pressure injuries. The trick is finding practical ways to put that evidence into...

Not long after we opened the doors to our small outpatient center in 2004, we experienced our first sharps injury. That was just the wake-up call we needed to ensure the event was a one-off mistake and not an unfortunate...

Surgery is currently dominated by two forms of turnover: The turnover of breaking down and setting up for the next case and that of OR personnel jumping ship or retiring. This combination of fast-paced scheduling and increasingly...

When Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law last year a measure that required hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to eliminate surgical smoke, it was a big win for the nurses...

This special issue of Outpatient Surgery Magazine is dedicated to safety from both the patient and the staff perspectives. It’s a topic that is near and dear to me for many reasons. As a nurse with more 30 years’ experience working at...

Coach orthopedic patients to better outcomes throughout their entire episode of care with exacCoach by Exactech. The virtual system features fully customizable messaging for sending automated and personalized texts...