Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Almost Left Behind - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine - April 2018

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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to get rid of than a pushy salesman. It seems nothing has worked and everything's been tried — from passionate pleas from OR nurses tired of working a job that requires them to inhale the smoke of burning tis- sue to national campaigns and a push to pass laws requiring surgical plume evacuation. Meanwhile, hospitals and surgery centers have trumpeted that they've gone smoke-free, banning smoking anywhere in the facility or on the grounds. Yet how many smoke-free facilities have also enforced a surgical smoke filtration policy in their operating rooms? A long-time OR nurse at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., is on a crusade to make surgical plume in her ORs disappear just as the ashtrays by the entranceway vanished. Baystate has been smoke-free for years — "with one glaring excep- tion to this rule: the operating room," writes Maureen Fournier, BSN, RN, CNOR, in an interdepartmental newsletter. "Unfortunately, we cannot come in to work and request a non-smoking room if we work A P R I L 2 0 1 8 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 5 5 After you make a commitment to go smoke-free, expect some resistance from surgeons. To help drive home the danger of sur- gical smoke, a facility manager purchased 2 hot-pink e-cigarettes and a nicotine-free strawberry vaping liquid. During a clinical committee meeting, she and the medical director began to smoke the e-cigs while discussing the dangers of surgical smoke. "At first, everyone was shocked, but they soon were asking questions and joining in on the discussion," she says. "The presentation worked — the next morning we heard our physicians talking to staff about the importance of evacuating surgical smoke." Driving Home Your Point VAPING

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