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