Cover Story

When most people hear the terms “time out” and “handoff,” they think of football. In OR parlance, a time out is a pause that’s performed prior to the initiation of an operative or invasive procedure. A handoff is the transfer of a patient’s care from one practitioner to another.

Leadership and strong teams are important in any organization, but especially in the high-stress, high-stakes setting of the operating room. This makes leadership development and team building critical to perioperative success.

Experts discuss how Lean principles and tools help teams identify waste and improve processes and how these processes are perfect for application in the perioperative setting.

The steam sterilization working group has collected feedback from users about the 2017 ANSI/AAMI ST79 update and spent two years researching and developing amendments. The result is the ANSI/AAMI ST79:2017’s 2020 amendments.

A growing number of states are introducing and passing legislation requiring hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) to use smoke evacuation systems to prevent human exposure to surgical smoke.

The past year-and-a-half has been a time unlike any that most nurses have ever seen due to the upending of the nation’s health care system by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the health care profession has dealt, and is still dealing, with unprecedented levels of stress, anxiety and burnout among all nurses, including those in the OR.