The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission require healthcare facilities to have policies and protocols in place for emergency situations and to hold regular practice drills. With natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, or fires, often there is at least some warning—some amount of time to…

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Compassion fatigue can come into play at any stage of nurses’ careers. Nursing is growing at a faster rate than other occupations, but it carries a high risk for burnout. Loss of job satisfaction, job-related distress, or perhaps exposure to too many traumatic events can threaten the ability of staff…

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Whatever your facility’s disaster management plan, it needs continual refinement to account for the differences between imagined and real scenarios. Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston hard on Saturday, August 26, 2017, is a case in point. The storm brought more than 60 inches of rain within a couple of days,…

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High labor costs, surgeon dissatisfaction, high staff turnover, and low staff competency are problems that dog many OR leaders at some point in their careers. When managers at the Stanford University Medical Center Main OR in Stanford, California, found themselves facing all of these problems at once, they knew something…

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Editor's Note Pregnant women who work two night shifts per week have a heightened risk for miscarriage after pregnancy week 8, this Danish study finds. Of 22,744 pregnant women analyzed, 2 or more night shifts the previous week increased the risk of miscarriage after pregnancy week 8 (hazard ratio, 1.32).…

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Editor's Note Better work environments are associated with lower odds of negative outcomes ranging from job dissatisfaction to patient mortality, finds this meta-analysis from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. This analysis of data from 2,677 hospitals, 141 nursing units, 165,024 nurses, and 1,368,420 patients in 22 countries found…

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San Diego in January is a place where many people would rather be, and the 475 healthcare business and industry leaders who gathered there for the 2019 OR Business Management Conference (ORBMC) enjoyed the mild climate along with high-quality presentations and fun networking events. Conference attendance rises each year, yet…

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Managing the OR is similar to playing a game of poker. To win, a player must be able to read the others around the table, and to succeed, managers must be able to read their staff members and colleagues. Most importantly, they all must know the rules and when it’s…

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Attendees at the annual OR Manager Conference have enjoyed the opportunity to ask experienced OR leaders questions about difficult managerial and clinical issues. The popularity of these “Ask Me Anything” sessions reflects the hunger for knowledge about how things are handled in ORs around the country, and they will be…

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Contaminated surgical instruments made ECRI Institute’s 2019 annual top 10 list of health technology hazards, coming in at number five: “Mishandling flexible endoscopes after disinfection can lead to patient infections.” Number two on the list in 2018 was “Endoscope reprocessing failures continue to expose patients to infection risk.” It’s not…

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