Outpatient Surgery Magazine Archive

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...

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...

With so many mobile C-arms available from numerous vendors who offer a wide variety of functionality and unique features, picking the right one for your facility can feel overwhelming. Start by collecting substantial feedback from...

There are several ways to ensure your staff is properly trained to handle a malignant hyperthermia emergency. Making them sit through yet another annual in-service or having them read dry educational materials...

Retained foreign objects were the most frequently reported adverse event between 2015 and 2017, according to The Joint Commission. We decided to tackle this issue head on by developing a custom count board...

Patients were already a bit nervous when they would arrive for their endoscopies or colonoscopies, and we noticed that sitting in the waiting room watching the news would often stress them out more. We thought, why not get rid...

CMS requires surgery centers to have infection preventionists on staff. Some facilities assign providers to the role simply to fulfil the requirement, but infection prevention has taken on a greater significance during...

Adverse events involving wrong-site, wrong-side and wrong-patient errors are devastating outcomes for surgeons who must live with the mistakes and patients who suffer unnecessary physical scars. These never events persist ...

When Stamford Health (Conn.) discovered a lack of standardization in its skin antisepsis protocols, the OR leaders at the facility knew they had act. After all, inconsistency is the enemy of an effective prepping process....