Each year at the Managing Today's OR Suite conference, a perioperative manager or director is named OR Manager of the Year. This year's conference will be September 29 to October 1 in Orlando, Florida. The OR Manager of the Year will receive an expense-paid trip to the meeting, including airfare,…
Preoperative baths or showers to prevent surgical infections have played to mixed reviews. Enthusiasm was dampened after a systematic Cochrane review in 2006, updated in 2009, examined 7 trials and found no clear evidence of a benefit for bathing or showering with chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) over a placebo. Preop bathing…
A new study provides strong evidence that surgical skin prep with chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG)-alcohol is superior to povidone-iodine scrub in preventing surgical site infections (related article). What if most of the surgeons in your OR use povidone-iodine? How can you introduce the new evidence to the surgeons and convince them…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…