Enhanced Recovery After Surgery: The new standard for perioperative care
Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERASยฎ) is a comprehensive, multifaceted, and multidisciplinary approach to the care of the surgical patient. ERAS bundles evidence-based elements to facilitate a faster recovery with fewer complications.1 Spanning the continuum of perioperative care, ERAS elements include: โข patient engagement and education โข preoperative optimization of nutrition…
Editorial
A surprising 70% of respondents to the 2019 OR Manager Salary/Career Survey report overall satisfaction with their jobsโsurprising in light of their significant workload, relatively flat salaries, number of staff vacancies, and industry-wide prevalence of clinician burnout. Burnout is defined as a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also…
Soup to nuts recruitment: Finding and onboarding OR nurses--Part 2
Recruitment is a daunting part of any OR leaderโs job because of the time it takes to identify and evaluate candidates, who must then complete an extensive orientation program once they are hired. Part 1 of this three-part series covered marketing and application strategies for achieving recruitment goals (OR Manager,…
Seminar eases nurses' discomfort with sudden patient declines
A patientโs condition can change in the blink of an eye. Are you prepared to respond? And what happens if the patient dies? This is the focus of an annual seminar at Houston Methodist Hospital that was developed to increase the comfort level of perioperative nurses caring for a patient…
Is point-of-use treatment an integral part of your sterilization process?
Providing sterile instrumentation for patient care is a basic fundamental of surgery, and ensuring sterility means that instrumentation must first be thoroughly cleaned, step by step. Point-of-use treatment, an important part of this process, is gaining the attention of accrediting agencies such as the Joint Commission, and it is included…
Say goodbye to skin injuries in surgical patients
Hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) fall under the care management serious event category, and the literature suggests the incidence of a pressure injury following surgery or a procedure may contribute to more than half of all hospital-related skin injuries. Furthermore, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has defined numerous…
Effect of recent barrier attire regulations in the OR
Editor's Note Though recent guidelines mandating additional barrier attire for all scrubbed and unscrubbed OR personnel from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Joint Commission, which include bouffant caps covering all hair and long-sleeved surgical attire covering all exposed skin, this study finds that this mandate does…
As ASC leaders' salaries dip, so does satisfaction
Salaries for ambulatory surgery center (ASC) leaders are down slightly, according to the OR Manager 2019 Salary/Career Survey, with slightly more than half of respondents (52%) earning $100,000 or moreโa decline from 60% in 2018, 54% in 2017, and 53% in 2016. That dip may be contributing to corresponding lower…
FDA: Class I recall of Allergan Natrelle Biocell textured breast implants
Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on September 12 designated the recall by Allergan of its Natrelle Biocell textured breast implants as Class I, the most serious. The recall was initiated because of a six times higher rate of breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), a cancer…
Superior patient-centered care crucial for complex outpatient procedures
About 2 years ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. As I researched the treatment alternatives, I became very concerned about the complications associated with traditional surgical prostatectomy or radiation. Then I learned that I might be eligible for an outpatient procedure: high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). Although HIFU is relatively…