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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Sarasota Memorial Health Care System (SMH) in Sarasota, Florida, is a Level 2 trauma center with 839 beds and more than 900 physicians. The 430 members of the surgical staff perform more than 24,300 inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures in the 34 operating suites each year. With this level of…

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Editor's Note A hospital’s safety culture may influence certain surgical patient outcomes, finds this study. A Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ), sent to administrators, quality improvement teams, nurses, anesthesiologists, and surgeons in 49 hospitals participating in the Illinois Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative, found that OR safety culture had the highest scores…

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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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Several never events at The Medical Center of Aurora (TMCA) in Aurora, Colorado, over a 1-year period prompted leaders there to launch patient safety first (PSF) initiatives. Part 1 of this series discussed how these initiatives were identified and implemented, and the importance of evidence-based communication tools (OR Manager, March…

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Editor's Note Failure to debrief after critical events is common in anesthesia trainees and teams, and communication breakdowns are associated with the failure to debrief, this study finds. Over a 1-year period at a large academic medical center, anesthesiology residents and some attending anesthesiologists were audited and/or interviewed about the…

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Can experience in the OR improve patient care in the postsurgical inpatient setting? Beginning last year, the OR at Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia, started its first Periop 101 program and trained six nurses from postsurgical care units to be perioperative nurses. During the program, the former care unit nurses found…

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What kind of relationship do you have with your boss? Many managers feel they don’t have enough support from their supervisors, and still others believe the relationship could be better. In the 2018 OR Manager Salary/Career Survey, for example, about a third of respondents had a neutral or unfavorable view…

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Today’s perioperative services staff consist of multiple generations with different backgrounds and communication styles. Nurse leaders must consider such differences, not only for recruitment and retention purposes but also for developing bonds with bosses who are not from their own generation—because they will have their own unique leadership styles. “Each…

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Editor's Note Organizational support initiatives and authentic leadership training for nurse leaders reduced bullying among licensed practical nurses (LPNs) in this study. A survey was sent to a random sample of 855 LPNs that was drawn from a total of 4,306 in a Midwestern state; 168 usable questionnaires were returned…

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