Ambulatory surgery center payment rates as a percentage of the hospital outpatient department rates have steadily declined over the years. In 2003, procedures...

We're all probably a little numb to medication safety. We get it. It's super important. We live the life. It's easy to become complacent until we have a problem....

Jennifer Pennock is AORN's senior manager of government affairs, though lately a better title for her might be senior manager of smoke evacuation legislation efforts....

Today's modern surgeons are directors and executive producers of the motion picture institutes that are today's sleek ORs, routing video from and to any flat-panel,...

We're a couple months into our unlikely — and unprecedented — partnership in which 3 rival hospitals within a 50-mile radius own and use the same ambulatory surgery...

Surgical facilities track a lot of data — quality measures, patient census, service line revenue and so on. But here’s something that no one regularly tracks: lifetime...

Our OR nurses suggested that when we were doing the count, that would be a perfect time to have a conversation about specimens before they go out to pathology....

If you use IV start kits, you might be wasting money with every catheter you place. Our IV start kits contained a number of items we never used, including povidone-iodine...

It's easy to blame this case of wrong-person surgery on the pathologist who admittedly mixed up biopsy slides, but we're still left to wonder what if anything the OR team...

Want to keep things running smoothly all day? Then get off to a fast start with your first-time starts. Here's how we did it:...

Whether you're a new OR leader still settling into your role or you've been herding surgeons for years and have the battle scars to prove it, one thing is certain:...

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I'd rather sleep a few minutes longer than make bacon and eggs or eat cereal that changes the color of...

Roughly 70% of retained surgical items are sponges, and roughly 80% of retained sponges occur with what staff believe is a correct count. No wonder OR managers...

When I noticed patients who visited our hospital's emergency department carried their personal belongings home in single-use plastic bags, I knew there had to be...

The SafeHaven automated hand hygiene monitoring system helps you monitor, measure and manage compliance. Every time a staff member performs an alcohol...

To grasp the importance of preventing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection in joint replacement patients, consider what happens if the bacteria...

Dirty instruments, broken instruments, missing instruments. In an ideal world, we'd never have to worry about the sterile processing department (SPD) causing...

If you've invested in robots, you might as well let everyone know that your facility offers the most advanced surgical technology. Our hospital, Pascack Valley Medical...

Do your surgeons and staff place their rings on a necklace or tie them to their scrub pants during a case? Now they can secure their rings to their bra straps with the Joleo...

I am the founder of Littlethanks (littlethanks.ca), a line of scrub-sized thank-you cards for nurses to let their fellow nurses know how much they appreciate and respect...