The most successful perioperative services leaders are those who have built excellent teams that balance individual responsibility and accountability with respect for all team members, regardless of the roles they play. To create that culture, OR leaders must model the behavior and attitudes they expect from their staffs. One way…

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To paraphrase the popular Alan Jackson song “Gone Country,” more than 1,400 perioperative nurse leaders from across the US and from other countries “went country” by attending the 28th annual OR Manager Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, this past October. They were drawn to both the in-depth educational opportunity and the…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare on October 15 released Oro 2.0, an online high reliability assessment and resource library to help hospital leaders determine their organizations’ level of high reliability maturity. The assessment process guides users through a series of questions that allows for discussion and…

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Editor's Note A surgeon’s transformational leadership skills were associated with improved OR team behavior, in this study. Each one-point increase in a surgeon’s transformational score corresponded to three times more information-sharing behaviors and nearly five and a half times more voice behaviors among the team members. With each one-point increase…

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Advocating for patients and staff alike, winning the respect of physicians, and driving growth are among the achievements that have made Kathryn Adamson, MBA, RN, the 2015 OR Manager of the Year. Adamson is administrative director of perioperative and trauma services at the University of Utah Health Care (UUHC) in…

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Building healthy relationships between leaders and employees is vital to the success of any organization. It’s especially important in perioperative services because of the teamwork needed to provide safe patient care. OR leaders must invest in their employees by fostering trust, job embeddedness, and employee commitment, empowerment, and accountability.  …

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Our Take In a study to gain insight into how nurse leaders are influencing the use of performance data to improve nursing care, two themes emerged: Getting relevant, reliable, and timely data into the hands of nurses The leaders' ability to “connect the dots” in working with different stakeholders. A…

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Certain words and phrases are used frequently in nursing—sometimes so frequently that their true meaning is lost. For some, the term “shared governance” is one of those. What is shared governance? “A dynamic staff-leader partnership that promotes collaboration, shared decision making, and accountability for improving quality of care, safety, and…

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Every perioperative services staff member, at every level, contributes to the success or failure of the department. Exceptional leaders understand this, and they are most successful when they discourage intimidation and invite everyone to take ownership of their roles. Teamwork in the OR is the next frontier in quality perioperative…

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Many healthcare professionals are all too familiar with the phenomenon of becoming burned out. In the midst of the intense work environment and long hours, they often struggle to remember why they do what they do, and they become disconnected. When Rich Bluni, RN, LHRM, kicks off this year’s OR…

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