Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Staff & Patient Safety - October 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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injuries so we can document and address them before surgery. We changed our policy so that any patient in a procedure lasting 3 hours or more is considered high risk, as well as anyone with a score of 16 or below on the Braden Scale for Predicting Pressure Injury Risk (osmag.net/M3BaHo). Those with a BMI of 19 or below, or 35 and above, are also considered high risk. Once we identify patients as high risk, we ask them to wear a bright green bouffant cap instead of our usual blue ones. We also place a green placard in their charts, so it's clear to all staff which patients are at heightened risk. • Positioning aids. If a patient has an existing injury, we use a 5- layer silicone border dressing to help protect the delicate area of skin. We also apply heel protectors to high-risk patients in the supine posi- tion, and keep a range of prophylactic foam dressings, gel-based pads and fluidized positioning devices available on our pressure injury cart to use on patients considered high risk. We've made equipment improvements in response to injuries that occurred in the past. In January 2017, a patient suffered a pressure injury on the occiput. We reviewed the incident and determined the injury was roughly the same size and shape as the donut pillow we were using. So we swapped the pillow out for a fluidized positioner, which is a specialized modality that offloads any pressure points on 4 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 9 • EXTRA PADDING Surgical teams need easy access to a variety of positioning aids to help prevent skin breakdown in vulnerable areas. Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN, CNOR

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