Even if your facility isn’t on the frontlines of the battle to combat COVID-19, you can still find ways to join in and help. For our temporarily shuttered surgery center, that meant...

Many surgical staff members went to areas hit hardest by COVID-19 to lend their desperately needed skills to patients infected by the virus. Even those who weren't on...

Effectively screening patients for COVID-19 is part of pre-op protocols as outpatient facilities across the country slowly begin performing elective procedures again....

It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed since the enactment of the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act. The landmark legislation requires surgical facilities to identify,...

The nature of spine surgery makes the risk of wrong-site errors greater than in any other surgical discipline. Similar-looking vertebrae, patient obesity, anatomic...

Even before the coronavirus crisis, operating a surgical facility in one of Alaska’s largest cities brought unique challenges. Patients from rural villages in the state’s rugged...

The sterile processing staff at Winchester (Va.) Medical Center reprocesses trays of instruments sent to them from 15 ORs. That's a lot to manage, so perhaps it's no surprise...

From the HIV crisis of the 1980s to the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, Maureen Spencer, MEd, RN, CIC, FAPIC, has seen a lot during her more than...

Imagine working in a facility where 50 orthopedic surgeons have their own unique skin prepping protocols. Factor in 20 nurses who are trying to support the variations...

You recently took to social media to host a Q&A about the coronavirus. What surprised you most about the response?...

Any reprocessing tech worth their scrub brush knows dirty instruments can't be properly sterilized. There's another instrument care risk hiding in plain sight, however,...

Prewarming Works Wonders; Early interventions to maintain normothermia reduce infection risks and increase patient satisfaction.

Healthcare professionals don't do well sitting still. If your staff is faced with too much free time during the COVID-19 crisis, look for non-clinical tasks that need to be done...

If a survey uncovers an issue that will take a lot of effort (time and money) to solve, always ask the surveyor if there’s an easier way to make the fix and still be...

Finally, thankfully, ORs have begun to reopen for elective procedures in communities where COVID-19 cases are on the decline. The coronavirus pandemic that temporarily...

I've been working near the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, intubating patients on a special team formulated specifically to manage the airways of...

Nasal decolonization should be part of a multifaceted approach to stop the transmission of the new coronavirus in surgical settings and to protect staff and...

There’s no silver-bullet, one-size-fits-all replacement for opioids in the management of post-op pain, so clinicians are experimenting with various drugs and techniques,...

On April 17, the Trump administration issued a three-step plan for reopening the American economy as parts of the nation begin to emerge from the coronavirus...

Working in the ICU comes as a culture shock to surgical professionals who have grown accustomed to the immediate gratification of caring for patients where successful...