Social and demographic factors play a huge role in any patient’s overall health and recovery from surgery. When treating patients who lack health insurance, family support, or language/literacy skills—among many other possible disadvantages—providing safe patient care can extend well beyond clinical aspects. OR managers and their staffs may take on…

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Anyone who has been involved in an OR design and construction project knows it is a labor-intensive, time-consuming effort—and usually far from seamless. There’s almost always something no one thinks of until it is too late, and the staff must learn to live with the flaws. But a multidisciplinary team…

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Injuries from needlesticks—whether from disposable syringes, IV catheters, or blood collection devices—accounted for more than 30% of all sharps injuries in 2016, especially among nurses. Injuries from skin injections alone accounted for 25.7% of all sharps injuries that year. And, for the first time, injuries occurring from suturing during procedures…

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Hungarian obstetrician Ingvar Semmelweis recognized the link between hand washing and childbirth fever in the mid-1800s. During his lifetime, this theory was often ignored or mocked, but ultimately hand washing was scientifically proven to prevent infections. Almost two centuries later, hand washing still reigns as the queen of infection prevention,…

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Janet Haas, PhD, RN, CIC, FSHEA, FAPIC, hopes technology will one day achieve what no other strategy has thus far: Increase the rate of hand hygiene compliance. Haas, president of the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, says it will need to be a small device that does…

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Editor's Note In this study, cataract surgery was associated with a patient’s reduced subsequent risk of being in a serious traffic crash as a driver. This analysis of 559,546 patients who had cataract surgery in at least one eye found that the crash rate decreased from 2.36 to 2.14 per…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on June 27 announced that the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) now requires employers (including many healthcare organizations) to report Form 300A data electronically because it no longer accepts paper submissions. Form 300A is a summary of serious work-related injuries and illnesses that occur…

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Disruption in the healthcare setting occurs all too often and can be dangerous for patients and staff like. Part 1 of this series discussed some of the reasons behind the volatile behavior of patients or their families and provided a list of organizations with resources for managing the problem (OR…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on June 13 announced that starting this month it will be implementing survey process improvements for how it assesses safety culture in hospitals and critical access hospitals. Improvements will be implemented for all other programs by October. Among the process improvement expectations: An organization will…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on June 11 issued a Health Advisory on investigations of hepatitis A outbreaks in multiple states in people reporting drug use and/or homelessness and their contacts. From January 2017 to April 2018, the CDC has received more than 2,500 reports…

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