Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Helping Hand - July 2019 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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J U L Y 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 6 7 4 Steps to Better Skin Prepping Improve application practices in your ORs with advice and lessons learned from experts at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Daniel Cook | Executive Editor H ow difficult is it to prep the skin for surgery? You pick an antiseptic agent and paint it on in concentric circles, beginning at the incision site and working outward, or scrub it in with a back- and-forth brushing motion. What can possibly go wrong? As it turns out, plen- ty — and your OR team might not even be aware they're slacking. When infection prevention experts at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas noticed an uptick in surgical site infection rates, they audited the sur- gical team's prepping practices during 51 procedures performed in May 2017. "We noticed staff didn't always meet required application times, use the correct application method or allow enough time for preps to dry," says Doramarie Arocha, PhD, MS, MT(ASCP)SM, CIC, FAPIC, • PHYSICIAN CHAMPION Michael Wait, MD, professor of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, helped push for improved prepping practices at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. UT Southwestern

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