Patients feel less pain when healthcare provider is nice
Editor's Note Patients having blood drawn by courteous healthcare providers were significantly more likely to say their pain was well-controlled, finds this study presented October 20 at the Anesthesiology 2019 annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. Analyzing responses from 4,740 adult patients on questions about pain control (range from 1 to…
CDC updates 1998 guideline for infection control in the healthcare workplace
Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on October 18 released an update to its “Guideline for infection control in healthcare personnel, 1998.” The updated document, “Infection Control in Healthcare Personnel: Infrastructure and Routine Practices for Occupational Infection Prevention and Control Services (2019),” applies to a broader range…
Medical marijuana research shows early promise for lessening opioid use
Editor's Note Medical marijuana shows early promise for lessening opioid use and potential abuse in a meta-analysis presented October 20 at the Anesthesiology 2019 annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. Overall the results suggest that medical marijuana may provide some benefits such as, decreased opioid overdose rates, decreased opioid use, improved…
Radiologist, AI combination improves breast cancer detection
Editor's Note An artificial intelligence (AI) model was able to detect breast cancer with nearly 90% accuracy when combined with analysis from radiologists, the October 18 Health IT Analytics reports. Researchers from New York University Schools of Medicine and Data Science developed the model to first consider small patches of…
Conference kicks leadership skills up several notches
The Big Easy put on a big program for the more than 1,400 perioperative nurse leaders and other healthcare professionals who flocked to New Orleans in September for the annual OR Manager Conference. Both the conference and PACU Manager Summit offered provocative new input and highly entertaining networking events. The…
Supportive leaders boost staying power of nursing staff--Part 1
OR nurse leaders are struggling not only to recruit staff, but to retain them—especially as younger generations begin to dominate the work pool. A 2019 study by Dowling Dols and colleagues found that Millennials were generally satisfied with their jobs, yet they anticipated staying with their current employer for 3.03…
Editorial
Our series on Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS), which began last month with an overview of its history and perioperative pathway, continues in this issue with examples of improved outcomes and the roles played by perioperative team members (see p 18). ERAS, known to speed recovery and increase patient satisfaction,…
Soup to nuts recruitment: Finding and onboarding OR nurses--Part 3
Recruiting OR staff who will best meet culture and competency expectations is a three-pronged process that starts with a sound marketing strategy, progresses to the application and interview stage, and concludes with the decision to hire and onboard. Parts 1 and 2 of this three-part series covered the roles that…
The role of the OR in ERAS pathway implementation
The US has been on a journey for the last several years to reduce the cost of healthcare. In 2017, the percent of gross domestic product attributed to healthcare goods and services was at 17.9%. This is expected to reach as much as 19.4% by the year 2027.1 Factors contributing…
Proactive steps paramount for greater surgical stapler safety
Internal surgical staplers made headline news in 2019. Reports discussed the little-known US Food and Drug Administration database housing tens of thousands of stapler-related problem reports and covered the agency’s recent proposal to reclassify staplers as Class II devices, instead of the more lightly regulated Class I. ECRI Institute named…