Operating Room

Hospital operating rooms (ORs) and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) must confront more than their fair share of challenges in the current healthcare environment. Many facilities are working with limited capital and non-capital budgets; facilities have cut back on spending. Volumes of surgical procedures have been reduced as a notable percentage of people are unexpectedly without insurance due to job losses. Those patients are procrastinating on surgical procedures while they search for new employment.

One of the most common questions related to the sterile processing department (SPD) is this little gem, asked by surgeons, nurses and scrub techs: why does it take so long to get our sets up to the operating room (OR)? The demand for faster turn-around of surgical instruments is constantly hampered by a number of time-related challenges. In addition, when processes are fragmented and the instrument management process is less than ideal, turnaround time can also increase.

While clinical activities on hospital floors such as injections or starting IVs pose the constant threat of percutaneous injuries, nowhere is the danger more real than in the fast-paced operating room environment. Knowing this, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), released at this year's Congress a sharps safety toolkit that puts into the hands of perioperative professionals the educational materials they need to advance their knowledge of safe practices when using sharps.

Infection prevention and control departments have responsibility and oversight for implementing and monitoring strategies that help reduce infection risk throughout healthcare facilities. Infection preventionists are often asked to weigh in on strategies that are unfamiliar to them. In the perioperative setting, a proven and effective approach in helping fight surgical site infections is maintaining normothermia.

ICT presents its 2011 survey results highlighting common infection control-related breaches in the operating room.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have identified practical strategies to implement environmentally friendly practices in operating rooms and other hospital facilities that could result in vastly reduced healthcare costs and pose no risk to patient safety.

Turning surgical instrumentation over quickly for the operating room (OR) has always been, and may remain, a constant hot topic. It is a critical issue for several reasons. Flashing is not a viable option for non-emergencies. Capital funds for inventory are not as robust as in years past. Sterile processing departments are often not located within or adjacent to many OR suites at most facilities. Surgical instrumentation and other medical devices are more complex and require unique and extensive processing more then ever. Furthermore, organisms are just as complex as the instruments we are trying to process, so, room for error is much less.