First article in a 2-part series.   Management should be the job people aspire to, says John Olmstead, MBS, RN, CNOR, FACHE, director of surgical services and emergency department at The Community Hospital in Munster, Indiana. “In too many hospitals, it’s the hot potato. People say, ‘I wouldn’t want to…

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As financial pressures grow, ORs are adding business managers. That’s particularly true for teaching hospitals, where 64% now have a business manager, and for larger ORs with 10 or more rooms, where 55% do, according to the 22nd annual OR Manager Salary/Career Survey. In contrast, 5 years ago, just 47%…

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With all that managers have to balance—schedules, meetings, staff, reports, and shrinking resources, not to mention home, family, and school—who has time to think about being funny? Humor may be more valuable than you imagine, not only in dealing with stress but also in being a better manager. Humor is…

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Nearly two-thirds (60%) of employees who leave a position do so because of their relationship with their direct supervisor, according to the Studer Group, a health care consulting organization. “Satisfaction is about relationship,” says Marcus Erb, senior research partner at the Great Place to Work Institute, which helps organizations become…

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An orientee comes to you in tears saying a couple of tenured nurses have snapped at her or huffed impatiently when she asked a question. Several other staff have met with you individually about conflict and hurtful comments they say are happening on one of the specialty teams. You already…

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There's plenty of buzz (and confusion) about "Lean health care." Many wrongly assume Lean is simply applying Toyota lean manufacturing tools to health care. Unfortunately, many approach it that way. At the University of Tennessee, we define Lean health care as "…the application of concepts, tools, and management prescriptions to…

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Special focus: Lean in the OR Page 11: How to have a leaner OR department Page 13: Getting staff's buy-in for Lean Page 16: The diary of one OR's kaizen event Page 18: Lean methods for weeding out waste Page 21: Using Lean to steer a department What could a…

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What can a surgical services director learn about running the OR by working at a forklift factory? During 2 weeks in Japan in 2004, Sandra Saltzer, RN, MPA, had a chance to tour 3 factories and actually work in one. At the time, she was director of surgical services at…

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When a perioperative nurse was recently promoted to be the OR's clinical coordinator, she inherited a department badly in need of coordination. The OR manager was frequently out of the department at meetings, leaving no one to coach the team. Not an experienced manager, the coordinator needed a way to…

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If you could huddle for 5 days with a few people who really understand your patient flow and you had the resources, what could you achieve? A team at Integris Southwest Medical Center in Oklahoma City took that approach and came up with a surprisingly simple and inexpensive tool to…

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