Surprisingly, patients are just as susceptible to a wrong-site procedure outside the OR as they are in surgery, a new study finds. Also surprising: Nonsurgical specialties contributed to patient injuries from wrong-site procedures as much as surgical specialties did. The only death in the cases analyzed was from a patient…

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Third in a series on managing bone allografts. In the October issue, articles included were Allografts: Overview of the process; and Donor screening: First step in safety. In the November issue, articles included Help in evaluating bone allografts; Bone allografts: Options for healing; and Making good choices of DBM products.…

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Fourth in a series on selecting and hiring perioperative nurses and integrating them into the staff. So far, this series on onboarding has taken us from developing selection criteria to making a job offer through the initial phase of employment. The onboarding process for new OR circulators involves 14 steps…

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When your OR is selecting allograft tissue, how do you know which federal regulations govern their safety? The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) uses a tiered approach to regulating these materials, explains Scott Brubaker, CTBS, chief policy officer for the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB). Minimally processed tissue…

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Flipping, double teaming, running ORs back-to-back. These are a few terms for the practice of providing multiple ORs for particular surgeons. The practice is widespread. A show of hands during a breakout session at the recent Managing Today's OR Suite conference in Orlando found nearly everyone used this practice. Flipping…

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ORs in facilities that adopted team training had a lower rate of deaths for surgical patients than facilities that had not yet had training, in a large new study from the Veterans Health Administration. The 74 VA facilities that had team training saw an 18% decrease in their annual surgical…

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Less focus on checking off boxes, more focus on teamwork. That's the shift experts say is needed to make lasting change to keep patients safer in surgery. The new study from the Veterans Health Administration finds OR team training was associated with a reduction in patient mortality (related article). VA…

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When leaders at New Jersey Surgery Center (NJSC) saw an increase in postoperative hypertension and lengths of stay for some patients, they decided to look deeper. They learned that discharges were being delayed because more patients were receiving vasoactive drugs and needed prolonged surveillance, says Patricia O'Donnell, RN-BC, CPAN, CAPA,…

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Recommendations for Class 6 emulating indicators, a new class of indicator for monitoring sterilization, have been issued for the first time by the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI). These indicators, which entered the market a couple of years ago, use a different approach than biological indicators (BI).…

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