STAFFING
• Satisfied surgeons and staff.
Relationships among pre-op and surgi-
cal nurses have improved. We've seen significantly fewer case delays
and believe it's helped patient satisfaction. The atmosphere of the pre-
op area is much calmer. Even the surgeons have noticed and appreci-
ate the benefits of the new system, because they always know exactly
where their patients will be in pre-op, which cuts down on the time
they used to spend between cases searching for the next surgical site
to sign.
Effectively easy
The changes we made cut down on patient flow congestion and essen-
tially eliminated the Where are they? Who did what? questions that
used to waste so much of our time. When I presented this process at
this year's AORN Congress, a nurse told me,
"That's just too simple." Yes, I said. It is simple
— but it works. OSM
Ms. Wilson (
wilsonm@wvuhealthcare.com
) is the
clinical preceptor/educator at West Virginia
University Hospitals in Morgantown.
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