Nearly a third (30%) of ambulatory surgery center (ASC) leaders have experienced layoffs of direct care staff during the past year, according to the 2020 annual OR Manager Salary/Career Survey, up from a mere 4% in 2019. COVID-19 is the likely culprit: Most of the comments received in response to…

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Editor's Note This study by noted nurse researcher Linda Aiken, PhD, RN, FAAN, and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia, finds that hospital nurses were burned out and working in understaffed conditions in the weeks preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, posing risks to the public’s health. The…

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Spikes in coronavirus cases starting in late June threatened to overwhelm hospitals in several states. Utah is one such state, but steps previously taken at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City suggest the 23-hospital system will be able to manage a surge. Leaders at Inova Health System in Falls Church,…

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Staffing to a block duration can be inefficient. Uncontrolled variables such as increased case complexity and unexpected staff absences can cause chaos. Leaders from Penn Medicine—Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia used data analytics to measure the efficiency of matching staffing against an optimized OR schedule, which allowed them to predict staffing…

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Recruiting and retaining OR nurses is harder than ever in the COVID-19 era. Many healthcare facilities are reconstructing their surgical case schedules after the mandatory pause in elective procedures, and some are still on hold. OR leaders are focused largely on guiding staff through the crisis and working toward a…

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Resuming elective surgical procedures is critical for recovering revenue lost during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and treating patients whose health may have been compromised while awaiting surgery. Timetables and protocols for resuming those procedures tend to differ by facility, but OR leaders nationwide feel that “we’re all…

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Bullying and incivility have long been pervasive in healthcare, particularly in nursing. Additional stressors related to COVID-19 have worsened things in many facilities. “When there’s a crisis, we see the best in people and the worst,” says Renee Thompson, DNP, RN, CSP. “On social media, we’re seeing a lot of…

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Proactive leadership, early preparation, and ongoing planning and communication have helped mitigate COVID-19 threats at Tampa General Hospital in Tampa, Florida. As a result, resuming elective surgical cases in early May was a relatively seamless process thanks to process improvements made before the pandemic hit. “We started working on COVID-19…

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Far fewer cases of COVID-19 have been seen in rural areas of the US than in large urban populations. But even healthcare facilities not inundated with COVID-19 patients have sustained revenue losses and disruptions in standard procedures. One major advantage for Heartland Surgery Center in Kearney, Nebraska, was seeing the…

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Everyone has had bad days at work when they may have felt frustrated, sad, angry, stressed, afraid, nauseated, sick, or overwhelmed. Why do some move from experiencing a terrible day at work to leaving the organization, whereas others pull themselves together? How do we rally from burnout, disappointment, frustration, and…

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