Outpatient Surgery Magazine Archive

Becoming an opioid-sparing surgeon was the most liberating thing I've done in 25 years of practice. Why? Because before I started down this revolutionary path,...

How long can an endoscope hang in storage before you have to reprocess it again? There's no definitive answer, but 7 days is the consensus storage interval based on research...

Despite widespread coverage of high-profile outbreaks associated with unsafe injection practices, staff members who use needles and syringes continue to place patients...

Wrong-site blocks represent nearly one-fourth of all wrong-site procedures, yet we hear precious little about nerve block safety. Block site marks aren’t always visible,...

There are so many ways to communicate with staff — emails, phone calls, text messages, snail mail, intercoms, breakroom bulletin boards, you name it — yet none of those...

True safety in the OR isn't about what you report to CMS and the various rating agencies that will grade you for quality. Self-reported safety surveys offer a lot of wiggle room...

It's hard to believe that I used to perform spine surgery by moving instruments based on feel, my ability to recall specifics about the patient's anatomy and grainy pictures...

Ever think of all you can do to optimize your patients' experience and improve their surgical outcomes — before they even step foot into your facility? Here are 5 easy ways...

1. You're certain that the surgeon you worked with today uses his personality as birth control. 2. You really think the best photograph of yourself lately is the one on your ID badge....

In an effort to reduce the infection rate among our colon resection patients, we took some advice from our GYN/ONCO surgeons on closing protocol. They had started the practice of changing gowns,...