Outpatient Surgery Magazine Archive

Life in our small ASC is different from most hospitals in our area. We've traded responding to emergency codes in ICUs for the pleasure of spending holidays with loved ones, and the hustle and bustle of ERs for...

This is a hectic time to run a GI center, isn't it? As you keep pace with newly scheduled colonoscopies and work through a backlog of postponed procedures, know the stakes...

Staff who need to call a code blue during an emergent situation sometimes hesitate to ask for help. In our hospital, nurses are educated and encouraged to call a code as soon as the need arises. An educational program...

Late last month, my cellphone buzzed with a text from my mom. She had sent a picture of her "I Got My COVID-19 Vaccine" sticker and said my dad got his, too. I was working on deadline, but paused, surprised by...

Reprocessing techs in our hospital who prepare instrument sets for sterilization use a seven-point checklist to ensure trays have been properly assembled. The checklist helps techs ensure instrument sets are loaded properly,...

Our facility's break room is very small, so we've posted a sign that says only six employees at a time can gather there during the pandemic. Numerous staff members are on break at once, though, so we spaced chairs...

If you want to roll out a patient warming protocol that requires your facility to invest time, resources money — and, of course, a change to the status quo — you need to give leadership a compelling reason why...

The two-inch red circle on the patient's sacrum was unmistakable. A PACU nurse noticed the deep tissue injury during a post-op assessment and called over to pre-op to see if one of her colleagues had documented...

Patients who go NPO in the hours leading up to their surgeries aren't physically prepared for the physical trauma they're about to endure. "Surgery is a major stress on the body," says Steven Bisch, MD,...

We have a multi-step protocol to complete for each knee, hip and shoulder replacement patient before the day of surgery. This protocol includes making pre-op calls to conduct a health assessment, an in-person visit...