Editor's Note Senior surgical residents can safely supervise junior residents performing appendectomies, and training programs should encourage faculty to let senior residents manage operative appendicitis as independently as possible as well as supervise junior residents intraoperatively, this study finds. In this review of 928 appendectomies performed at the University of…

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Editor's Note Using a learning culture perspective that acknowledges blame and responsibility can facilitate learning from mistakes, this Canadian study finds. A total of 19 physicians were interviewed on their experiences in learning from medical errors. Memories of mistakes from residence training stood out, and participants expressed feeling both responsible…

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Staffing headaches for OR managers continue, according to the 2019 annual OR Manager Salary/Career Survey, with more than a third of respondents reporting that the percentage of open positions compared with 12 months ago has increased for both RNs and surgical technologists (STs). The clock has to be turned back…

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Millennials will soon comprise 50% of the nursing workforce. They are sometimes criticized for lacking commitment because they change jobs more often than their older counterparts. Yet research finds patients are safer when nurses are satisfied with their work environments, so it would seem that newer nurses and nurse managers…

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Poor communication has been the root cause of many sentinel events over the years, and there has been growing recognition of how the work environment and culture influence patient outcomes. In a 2018 Sentinel Event Alert, the Joint Commission stressed the need to develop a “reporting culture”—to make it safe…

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Editor's Note Hospitals with more nurses who have bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) degrees have better outcomes for patients after cardiac arrest, this study finds. For the study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, analyzed data from the American Heart Association’s Get with the Guidelines-Resuscitation registry, RN4CAST-US hospital…

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Editor's Note The “July Effect”−the idea that more errors occur in July because of the influx of new interns and residents starting their in-hospital training−does not apply to cardiac surgery, this study finds. For more than 470,000 cardiac procedures analyzed (coronary bypass, aortic valve, mitral valve, thoracic aortic aneurysm), in-hospital…

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Editor's Note Laypeople currently trained in the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Bleeding Control Basic (B-Con) course may not be prepared to care for bleeding individuals because the principles for correct Combat Application Tourniquet (CAT) application taught in the course are not fully translatable to other commercial or improvised tourniquets,…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on June 26 announced that, effective immediately, Human Resources (HR) standard HR.01.05.03, element of performance (EP) 15, has been deleted from the Hospital, Critical Access Hospital, Ambulatory Care, and Office-Based Surgery accreditation programs. The deleted EP is: “The [organization] verifies and documents that individuals (including…

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Editor's Note Ambulatory surgery center (ASC) administrators and managers trying to keep pace with the rapid growth in their facilities will not want to miss the robust outpatient surgery education offered at the 2019 OR Manager Conference. On Tuesday, September 17, Beverly Kirchner, BSN, RN, CNOR, CASC, chief compliance officer…

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