Considering the astronomical costs associated with even a single surgical site infection (SSI), it makes sense to take every possible precaution to mitigate the risks. But one...

Professionals in the sterile processing department (SPD) do their part to break the chain of infection by disinfecting and sterilizing the tools physicians use to provide safe...

The sterile processing department at my busy medical center was recently expanded to ensure instrument care could keep pace with the opening of new operating rooms and...

As soon as patients are wheeled out of ORs, your surgical team jumps into action. They wipe down and disinfect surfaces, thoroughly mop every square inch of floor space,...

Reprocessing flexible endoscopes is a never-ending job filled with potential pitfalls that can jeopardize patient safety. Our endoscopy center performs about 60 cases a day,...

You’re probably beyond exhausted right now. As the pandemic raged on relentlessly over the past year, you worked ceaselessly and went to extraordinary lengths to...

Lowering your facility’s rate of surgical site infections (SSI) is not something you can accomplish overnight. But that didn’t deter us from wanting to improve our infection...

An increasing number of disinfecting robots have been rolling through the hallways at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth. They’re being used in various areas...

Complaining is as American as baseball (the games are too long!) and apple pie (the crust isn’t flaky enough!). Many of our problems simply aren’t that serious, but that doesn’t stop us from griping about, well,...

Last month, the FDA announced it was investigating post-procedure infections and contamination issues involving urological endoscopes that were cited in 450 Medical Device Reports (MDRs) from January 2017 to...

Great Ideas for your OR

I was in New York City working at the Hospital for Special Surgery when the pandemic hit. The outpatient ORs in which I was training to advance my skills as a minimally invasive spine specialist were turned into intensive care...

What a difference a year can make. Even as vaccines are being administered and lingering restrictions brought on by the pandemic are being lifted, your center must be prepared to face continuing COVID-related...

Our hospital used to have an issue with surgical team members wearing scrubs out of the facility, washing them at home and wearing them back to work, habits that went against proper laundering protocols and prevented us...

We keep an emergency flip chart at the front desk of our ASC that’s filled with easy-to-follow emergency response protocols. We also conduct true-to-life safety drills to make sure our staff is ready for nearly any situation...

Have you ever noticed a colleague not following hand hygiene protocols or forgetting to wipe down equipment with the proper cleaning products? It can be uncomfortable to call them out, especially in front of a patient. We use...

Many nursing students aren’t afforded a surgical rotation or clinical observation of an operating room during their schooling, so we created A Day in the Life of an OR Nurse program to showcase how rewarding working in...

There is currently no clear consensus for when it’s safe to operate on patients who are recovering from COVID-19. A baseline was set in March with the publication of an international, multicenter study by the enormous...

AORN guidelines stipulate that hair should be clipped around surgical sites to reduce the risk of infection. To make sure pre-op staff properly clip the right areas, we filled a binder with procedure-specific pages that indicate...

We’ve heard some wonderful stories about facilities that repurposed blue wrap to make sleeping mats and blankets for the homeless, and wanted to do something similar. Our blue wrap was too small to repurpose in that capacity,...