AORN journal
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In 2001, a team of health care providers from Tennessee undertook a medical mission to the Nigerian Christian Hospital in Aba, Nigeria. During A 10-day period, the surgical team applied US and AORN standards when possible, but found they also had to accept some of the local standards because of the lack of medical supplies, cleaning supplies, and properly functioning equipment in this impoverished area. The 60 surgeries performed by the team was a small number relative to the community's overwhelming needs, but the team members were rewarded with the knowledge that they had helped many patients by providing them with quality care that normally would have been unavailable.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Medication safety: just a label away.
In perioperative settings, medications are removed from manufacturers' identifying containers; therefore, scrub personnel should label medications placed on the sterile field. Compliance with medication labeling practices with the use of both blank and preprinted labels was tested in the OR at a Houston, Texas, hospital. Scrub personnel were more likely to label medications and medication-delivery devices when preprinted medication labels were provided. Data obtained from this project influenced the hospital's management team to supply preprinted labels for all procedures to improve safety for surgical patients.
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Preoperative patient fasting is an essential element of the patient preparation process, but patients may be fasting for excessive lengths of time. Investigators at one facility used semi-structured interviews to explore the knowledge and beliefs of patients, nurses, and anesthesia care providers regarding the practice of preoperative patient fasting. Findings indicate that some patients had excessive fasting times, and practitioners had erroneous perceptions about patient knowledge regarding the rationale for fasting and compliance with instructions. Clinicians expressed concern about the effects of excessive fasting but were reluctant to relax the policy.
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Surgical site infections (SSIs) adversely affect approximately 500,000 patients annually, causing immense human suffering and taking a huge financial toll on patients, hospitals, insurance companies, and the government. National organizations have made recommendations for reducing SSIs, and many advances have been made in evidence-based practice recommendations that result in fewer SSIs. Reusable electrocardiogram (ECG) lead wires can be a significant source of infection. One medical center near Richmond, VA, began using a disposable ECG lead wire set and wireless transceiver system and subsequently experienced a 40% decrease in SSIs.