Keynote: What would Florence do?
When did the health care crisis get to be a crisis? Was it last year with the capital crunch and reimbursement cutbacks? Was it the evolution of managed care and corporate medicine? Does it go back to when Medicare was established? What would Florence Nightingale say about the health care…
Editorial
It took a Texas jury less than an hour on February 11 to return a not guilty verdict for Anne Mitchell, RN. An administrator at 15-bed Winkler County Memorial Hospital in the small town of Kermit, Texas, Mitchell was charged by the local sheriff with a felony after she reported…
Preventing pressure ulcers: New lessons from Minnesota
New data from Minnesota hospitals offers more insight into preventing pressure ulcers during long surgical procedures. Data collected through the state's adverse event reporting system in 2009 found 13% of the 122 Stage 3, Stage 4, and unstageable pressure ulcers reported were related to long surgical procedures. Attention to this…
Will skin-prep practice change following new study results?
Strong evidence from a new 6-hospital study could lead many ORs to change their traditional practice for surgical skin preparation. In the first prospective, randomized study to compare the effect of 2 skin prep agents on the incidence of surgical site infections (SSIs) after clean-contami-nated surgery, a chlorhexidine (CHG)-alcohol product…
Total ankle replacement for degenerative ankle disease
Editor's Note APRIL 2010 OR leaders are striving to make evidence-based decisions about new technology. OR Manager, Inc, and ECRI Institute have joined in a collaboration to bring quarterly supplements with summaries of the Institute's technology assessment reports to OR Manager readers. ECRI Institute is an independent nonprofit organization that…
SSI prevention: How's your practice?
Preventing surgical infections is what perioperative nursing is all about. From the moment they don a scrub suit and cap, they engage in well-practiced steps to protect patients from harmful micro-organisms. Surgical site infections (SSIs) are a well-known cause of suffering and death. An estimated 500,000 SSIs occur each year.…
Preventing S aureus infections: What's needed for screening?
A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that treating patients who are Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriers with mupirocin nasal ointment and chlorhexidine gluconate soap for 5 days reduces hospital-associated postoperative S aureus infection by 60%. "This well-designed, well-executed study contributes more to our knowledge that screening…
Patient safety at 10 years: How far have we come? What's next?
If you were to give patient safety a grade on progress over the past 5 or 10 years, what would it be? OR leaders and their colleagues have participated in an array of initiatives since the Institute of Medicine published its well-known 1999 report, To Err is Human. They include…
Free Daily News
- Proposed tariffs threaten medical device supply chain
- Providers push back on insurance cost-cutting hurdles
- EHR-integrated clinical decision support reduces unnecessary preoperative tests
- Infection control guidelines focus on regional anesthesia, pain management
- Study links high surgeon stress, positive patient outcomes
- Researchers recommend extending colonoscopy screening interval for low-risk patients
- New wrong-site surgery prevention toolkit seeing traction in ASCs
- Podcast episode discusses the anesthesia provider shortage in ASCs
- Study explores use of antibiotics as alternative to pediatric appendectomy
- Medical device shortages present pediatric patient challenges, FDA warns
Career Center
- Registered Nurse / Med-Surg - Lehigh Valley Health Network - Allentown, PA
- General Surgery Opportunities in Beautiful, Coastal Southeastern Virginia - Riverside Health System - , VA
- BC/BE General Surgeon - LifeBridge Health - Westminster, MD
- ENT Skull Base Surgeon/Rhinologist (Edison, New Jersey) - Hackensack Meridian Health - Edison, NJ