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ORX Awards and the Winners Are ... - September 2014 - 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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6 0 O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 Catching on One of the advantages of a top-to-bottom safety initiative is that it becomes contagious. People start looking for other ways to improve safety and efficiency. "In addition to standard emergency manuals, our anesthesia and nursing staff worked together to assemble an emergency manual that specifies treatment for common and rare surgical complica- tions," says Ms. Fairchild. "Our crew resource team audited 441 case carts and found that 30% were incorrect. Many had errors because pick cards were incorrect. Now we're not pulling things we don't need, and nurses don't have to run around getting things at the last minute. The team also redesigned the packs we use for pain man- agement. They found we were throwing out half of the stuff in the packs. We do 50 or more pain cases a week, so that saved a lot of money." Small mistakes are bound to happen, but the idea is to make sure they don't get repeated. "We also now have a new methodology for changing preference cards," says Ms. Fairchild. "We hung up red pens in the ORs, so if someone finds an error, the correction can be made right there in red ink that's easy to see. Then the cards go back to the case coordinator to make the correction in the system." At Crane, if it promotes safety, it's likely to be viewed as a good investment. "People were saying that the wheels on our case carts were hard to push," says Ms. Fairchild. "So we did some research and found an alternative. It cost about $3,000 for new wheels, but if they're easier to push — and they save somebody from a back injury — that's a good investment for us." — Jim Burger

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