Outpatient Surgery Magazine

No Guarantees - March 2017 - 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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The Case of the Missing Probe Nurses pocket things for safe keeping, not to steal and sell. E quipment and supplies in the operating room come up missing all the time. It's beyond me how that happens. Oh, I know small things like suture, dress- ings and instruments are easy to store in your pockets until you get a moment to return them to their proper place. That might not happen until the next day if, like me, you're halfway undressed in the changing room when you notice the items are still crammed in your pockets. So into the locker the items go until you can return them the next day. Sometimes, instruments, cords, tips, hardware and expensive sup- plies somehow end up in the trash or the laundry bags. Some facilities wand the bags to check for concealed metal objects before pitching them down the chute. Should you find one, there's no dignified way to dumpster dive to fish out the missing items. Criminal minds Please tell me how equipment bigger than a breadbox and not on a sterile field can come up MIA? The circulator can't be stashing or tossing items that big in the locker or the trash. So, where are these items going? I heard from one of my sources that a $10,000 neoprobe gamma detection system at her hospital had come up missing. Gamma probes are used primarily for sentinel lymph node mapping and parathyroid 1 3 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A R C H 2 0 1 7 Behind Closed Doors Paula Watkins, RN, CNOR • LOST AND FOUND Items stashed in pockets eventually find their way back to the supply room. Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN

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