Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/873929
reminded that such preps need to dry for at least 3 minutes. Up in flames Then a clinician is randomly selected from the crowd, and everyone gets a dramatic demonstration of how outpatients can quickly become inpatients as a result of impatience. After about 90 seconds of drying time has elapsed, the clinician directs a flame toward the prep, and whoosh, up goes Bruce in flames — flames that rapidly spread across his entire body. His job done and the point made, Bruce — affectionately named after Bruce Kupper, the president and CEO of Medarva Healthcare and an outspoken safety advocate — is snuffed out and cooled off, before going back into storage to wait for the following year's demon- stration. "So far, he's survived," says Mr. Stanford, the surgery center's direc- tor of clinical services. "But he's showing the effects. We're probably going to have to replace him in a few years." But the char marks on Bruce are a badge of honor, a testament to the impact he's having. "When a clinician sees how easily a patient's skin can be ignited, and sees the flames on the body, it leaves an impression that this is something they can't afford to take lightly," says Mr. Stanford. "Fire in the OR can easily be prevented and this ensures that no mistakes take place." More than prep Since skin preps are only one kind of fire hazard, the trainers are also careful to cover other important aspects of fire safety, including a demonstration of how oxygen feeds fire, and how easily fire can engulf and even melt an oxygen tube. And drapes, they point out, can both lengthen the drying process, and obscure a fire until it's too late S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 3 7