New leaders are at a premium in the perioperative setting, a fact that has been pushing organizations to explore innovative options to fill leadership gaps. Ideally, healthcare organizations should have a comprehensive program that integrates didactic instruction with mentorship to successfully build new nurse leaders. One example is the structured…
Editor's Note Encouraging words are more appreciated when they are informal and specific in their praise, reports the May 15 Fast Company online. A few ways for managers to put this into practice include: Showing appreciation for an idea not just in meetings but during impromptu interactions, like corridor conversations.…
A perioperative staffing schedule that meets coverage needs during high- and low-volume times and satisfies the demand for better work-life balance can be difficult to achieve. To help meet these challenges in its 50-room OR, the perioperative services department at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, designed a perioperative float…
San Antonio, Texas, played host to the 2018 OR Business Management Conference (ORBMC), attended by more than 400 surgical services leaders, business managers, and industry leaders from across the US. Attendees chose from a menu of topics—including strategies to increase case volume, efficiency, and data transparency, right-size the OR, and…
When Carol Schneider, MSN, RN, CCRN, CPAN, became manager of a postanesthesia care unit (PACU) at Boston Medical Center in Massachusetts, she found a plethora of problems, including poor communication skills, low employee engagement scores, and bullying from surgeons and staff. “It was a very bad climate that was putting…
Creating a more harmonious work environment is a struggle for some OR leaders. Tips on how to achieve this were offered during the 2017 OR Manager Conference and the 2018 OR Business Management Conference (ORBMC), and we share some of these in the March issue. A dysfunctional atmosphere in the…
Disengagement costs organizations money through lost productivity, not to mention the risk of errors that a disengaged workforce brings. Yet in August 2017, Gallup reported that only 32% of people are engaged at work. Much of disengagement can be traced to what Cy Wakeman, president and founder of Reality-Based Leadership,…
An organization’s culture is shaped by the collective attitudes and behaviors of the people who work there, and if no one is willing to make personal changes, no program of the month is likely to have a lasting impact. To change their attitudes and behaviors, people must be made aware…
Kermit the frog famously said, “it’s not easy being green.” He longed to be some other color, and OR leaders faced with managing a bully have probably wished they, too, could be someone—or somewhere—else. Using some recommended approaches can help. In Part 2 of this three-part series on bullying, OR…
The Best in OR Business Award will be presented to Karlene Power, MSN, BSN, RN, at the 2018 OR Business Management Conference in San Antonio on February 1. Power already has been recognized for her outstanding work at Banner Health in Phoenix, where she is system executive director, perioperative service…