When Carol Schneider, MSN, RN, CCRN, CPAN, became manager of a postanesthesia care unit (PACU) at Boston Medical Center in Massachusetts, she found a plethora of problems, including poor communication skills, low employee engagement scores, and bullying from surgeons and staff. “It was a very bad climate that was putting…

Read More

Creating a more harmonious work environment is a struggle for some OR leaders. Tips on how to achieve this were offered during the 2017 OR Manager Conference and the 2018 OR Business Management Conference (ORBMC), and we share some of these in the March issue. A dysfunctional atmosphere in the…

Read More

Disengagement costs organizations money through lost productivity, not to mention the risk of errors that a disengaged workforce brings. Yet in August 2017, Gallup reported that only 32% of people are engaged at work. Much of disengagement can be traced to what Cy Wakeman, president and founder of Reality-Based Leadership,…

Read More

An organization’s culture is shaped by the collective attitudes and behaviors of the people who work there, and if no one is willing to make personal changes, no program of the month is likely to have a lasting impact. To change their attitudes and behaviors, people must be made aware…

Read More

Effective use of a daily huddle and customized software for scheduling have had a dramatic impact on efficiency at NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital in New York City. Cancellations on the day of surgery have dropped from a rate of about 10% prior to implementation of huddles to less than 1%,…

Read More

Editor's Note Purposeful completion (fidelity) of, more than adherence to, items in the surgical safety checklist diminished intraoperative delays in this study. Of 591 cases analyzed, 110 (19%) had at least one documented intraoperative delay. The majority were related to missing (50%) or malfunctioning (30%) equipment. Degree of fidelity was…

Read More

Editor's Note A new smartphone app called “WoundCare” is successfully letting patients send images of their surgical wounds to nurses for monitoring, this study finds. The goal of the app, developed by researchers from the Wisconsin Institute of Surgical Outcomes Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison, is earlier detection of surgical…

Read More

Healthcare mergers and acquisitions are becoming as common as add-on cases in the OR, with hospitals struggling to stay profitable in a financially challenging environment. Between 2008 and 2014, the United States had nearly 400 hospital mergers and acquisitions (M&A), with more than 750 hospitals being acquired or merged. “It’s…

Read More

Kermit the frog famously said, “it’s not easy being green.” He longed to be some other color, and OR leaders faced with managing a bully have probably wished they, too, could be someone—or somewhere—else. Using some recommended approaches can help. In Part 2 of this three-part series on bullying, OR…

Read More

Concern about opioid abuse has reached epic proportions in recent months, and healthcare providers have come under increasing pressure to help mitigate the problem. Curbing the tendency to overprescribe pain medications is considered the first, most obvious step, but there are other actions that can also improve patient safety. Nurse…

Read More